Ergo Jr: a low cost robot for education
Ergo Jr is a low cost arm designed for education, easy to build and modify. Thanks to visual programming, it can be used in schools to realize from small to more complex projects.
Features
Originally designed in the "Mathematics: a beautiful elsewhere" artistic experiment, the Ergo Jr has been adapted to fit with education needs.
It is a robotic arm, consisting of 6 motors allowing life-like movements and 3D printed elements. The use of rivets make the assembly, modification and reassembly easy. Ergo Jr comes with three tools for different interactions with its environment: a lampshade, a gripper and a pen holder.
The robot is controlled with a Raspberry Pi board, and a camera helps it interact with the world.
Everything in the robot is let transparent and accessible to promote an educative approach and an interactive technology.
Program Ergo Jr
Ergo Jr relies on Snap!, a variant of Scratch, the visual programming language. Its accessibility and efficiency make it a great tool to discover robotics and understand the digital world. It can be used directly on the robot with no additional installation. The robot is also compatible with ROS and Python.
It comes with a set of pedagogical activities, developed with high-school teachers, ranging from the discovery of the robot and how to control it to more complex and integrated project. These activities are accessible for free on the project's forums.
Programming examples
Get your Ergo Jr
The Ergo Jr kit is distributed by Génération Robots.
You can also browse the source files to build your own.