Educational Robots

An educational robot is small on purpose. The feature is a desktop arm and a two-finger gripper a student can see move. Blocks, a laptop, and a short program are enough to teach a pick and a place.

Start with one motion

Home the arm. Open the gripper. Close it on a block. Move to a second spot and release. That loop is the whole first lesson. Vision and extra axes come after the class can predict where the gripper will be.

Keep the bench safe and open

A small arm on a table can be stopped by hand. Mount it so the reach stays on the bench. Students stand to the side of the travel, and the code is on the laptop next to the arm so they can change one line and run it again.

The same idea scales later. A class that can program this gripper can read a real cell, because every larger robot is still a path plus a tool on the end.