iRobot Root rt0 Coding Robot: Programmable STEM Toy for Kids 6+, Ideal for Creative Play Through Art, Music, & Code, White

Nice product

Our 6-year old granddaughter learned to program the bot in one day and dazzled the family on Christmas night with a demonstration of coding for the robot

The media could not be loaded. The iRobot Root rt0 (rt0) is not only a fun toy, but serves as an effective introductory learning tool for two emerging and very challenging fields - Coding and Robotics. When I first opened the the rt0, I knew nothing about coding, and the thought of using coding to operate a robot was overwhelming.The great thing about the rt0 is it has three levels of coding. Although the first level of coding is geared towards young children, it does an excellent job in introducing beginners of all ages to the concepts of coding and operating robots. Once I got the hang of the first level, it was pretty easy to get the rt0 to perform customized functions using the library of codes included in the program.Accessing the coding program is as simple as logging onto the website and syncing the robot with the program via bluetooth. As long as you know what you want the robot to do, coding to meet those functions is simple. The challenge increases with each next level of coding, until you get to level 3 which is actual coding language like you see in Python or C++. There is a simulation included in the program that shows you what the robot will do based on your coding before commanding the real world robot to perform the functions. The simulation is especially helpful so that you can correct any coding errors. Now I am moving onto more challenging robotic programs with hopes of increasing my coding and robotics skills to solve real world issues.I highly recommend anyone who aspires to have a future career in robotics and computer science or who simply wants to explore and have fun with robotics, to start with rt0. It makes harnessing the future of technology easy and exciting.

The iRobot Root rt0 Coding Robot is one neat little starter robot. It comes with a foldable segmented white board (each is a little square), a marker to use with the bot, a charging cable, and the robot itself. The robot does not come with a USB to wall outlet adapter but given a lot of things do this was not a problem for us as we could easily just charge it with an existing.Once the robot was charged we were able to install the app easily from the play store. It paired quickly with the phone and immediately allowed us to begin placing some code blocks. The app itself is nice in that it has a sandbox mode on the right for testing your code prior to performing the action if you so desire.The biggest downside so far is just that the app doesn't limit the code based on the robot you have so it shows some rt1 only commands like lowering the eraser and sensing colors. That's not too bad though as it does still have a lot of functionality it just led to some disappointment as my son obviously got excited seeing those options (I had read previously it didn't have those sensors but he was less informed so it was a let down for him).You can do a lot with the app though which makes it great. It allows you to quickly toggle between 3 levels of coding difficulty and it's all drag and drop so it's really just a matter of how much detail you want to go into and the format it's displayed with. For example the move forward command in level 1 it has very specific intervals that you can move with, level 2 on allows much more control over the distance you go. The same for rotations where level 1 is locked to some common ones while the latter two you can do a lot more with.I wish for level 1 they broke out some of the movements a bit more into their own actions. For example the marker down one is also eraser down (this has no eraser) and market up commands. You click it and it lets you toggle which one you want. It seems like it really should just have separate ones for each of those but I think given the eraser would only go down if you lifted the marker I guess they decided to keep them together.One word of caution if you go from level 3 to level 1 with some specific intervals that are not supported you'll get a warning and it will remove those values (IIRC) and use something supported by that level. Not a big deal but I enjoyed showing my son how the level 1 to level 3 changes so it limited us in terms of some of the more complex code we were making (we wrote out a letter A for his name so needed some more specific rotations).I think it's all really cool though. I wish they had had the ability to add more functionality / sensors with upgrades we could buy as it does feel a bit limited in that it's mostly a marker robot as it is now. We'll see if we can find some chalk that's the right size to use with it outside over the next few weeks as it would be cool if we could do that over the whiteboard as it's limited space wise. I'd highly recommend it although hopefully they remove some of these sensors from the app when using the rt0.

The media could not be loaded. These days, coding toys seem to be all the rage. My 6 and 8 year old has been using OSMO coding games and apps for half year. They were super excited to get this iRobot Root rt0 Coding Robot Programmable STEM Toy.You couldn’t find a better learning high technology device for young kids. It is a low-cost coding robot. It is what you are learning to code a computer, you are learning to give instructions to a computer to have it do what you want it to do.The Root looks like a vacuum, but performs like a robot. It can be programmed to do a long list of activities, including drawing, climbing walls, and playing musical notes.Like its predecessor, the Root rt0 is a two-wheeled mobile robot. It operates based on the coding commands kids give to it via the companion iRobot Coding App.I'm a total coding newbie, so I really liked that the app has a robust section of lessons that teach the fundamentals of how to code. I liked about the Root coding app is how colorful and appealing it is for kids. It's chock full of coding lessons, activities, and challenges, but the images are colorful and age-appropriate. The easy-to-follow instructions walk users through a series of simple steps that program Root to do things like light up and move forward.One of the aspects that makes Root very approachable for even the youngest coder is that you don't need to be an advanced reader to create sequences of code. Each block of code has an image that corresponds to what you want Root to do.Root is one of the best coding toys that I've seen and tested. If you're looking for a coding toy that's easy for kids to use and that they'll want to play with again and again, Root will not disappoint.