Root

$200, Smart Toy, iPad, iPhone

Teaches: Art/Creativity, planning, Mathematics, coding

CTR Review

Due on the market "June 2018" this programmable has a hole in the middle, and magnets that allow it to climb around vertically on a magnetic white board. We had a chance try it at CES in January. The robot is controlled with a tablet (the demo was done on an iPad) via bluetooth, using an app twith drag and drop commands. The core concept is very much in line with Seymour Papert's original programmable Turtle concept. Just replace the pens with magnetic white board markers. A built in speaker can play sounds, that might be associated with colors that it drives over. The app features games that can be unlocked, to teach children real programming languages including Python, JavaScript and Swift. Root was made by Zee Dubrovsky (formerly with Sonos, iRobot), Raphael Cherney (formerly with Apple, Microsoft), and Radhika Nagpal (Harvard).