Upcoming Projects:
Teachable Machine App for BBC Micro:Bit
A new mini-app is already available on the Cardboard Robots website! This time, it’s an interface for Teachable Machine to easily add AI image classification capabilities to your robot.
Teachable Machine itself is an online app made by Google that makes training machine learning models as easy as possible. You can learn how to use it in a minute, and in the next minute, you have your first AI model trained. It is fantastic for education and very classroom-friendly.
My app allows you to take a model trained in Teachable Machine and connect it with Micro:Bit, making it super easy to add image, sound, or pose recognition capabilities to your Micro:Bit robot.
What I like most about this app is the fact that you can run it on your smartphone and easily mount it on your robot—so you don’t need any extra accessories, cameras, etc., to add AI functions to your robots.
You can go to the Cardboard Robots website to test the app now.
Tutorial videos and project ideas will come in the upcoming weeks.
Ping Pong Ball Contraptions
A few months ago, I designed a set of cardboard contraptions to transport ping-pong balls and build some kind of Rube Goldberg machines—great for bigger workshops, not just for kids!
I made three machines:
- Ball Dispenser
- Ball Color Sorter (with the Teachable Machine app mentioned earlier!)
- Ball Lifter
You can build fun and quite spectacular factory lines with these machines.
Micro:Bit Robotics for Teachers
I spent the last two months working on a video course for teachers and educators. It is finally complete, and I’d like to give a huge THANK YOU to everyone who bought it in preorder. Your support substantially helps me continue working on Cardboard Robots!
If you haven’t heard about my course and you’re looking for examples of how to code cardboard robot designs, practical lesson ideas, and ways to introduce Micro:Bit robotics in your classroom, I really hope this course will be useful for you.
Buying the video course and PDF robot templates is also the best way to support this channel—so if you’re thinking about it, DO NOT HESITATE! And thank you in advance!
HEVEBOT for HEVELIANUM Educational Centre
One last thing I’d like to tell you about is my cooperation with HEVELIANUM Educational Centre from Gdańsk.
This project is one of my favorite things in the past weeks and exactly the type of collaboration I was hoping for when starting Cardboard Robots.
Hevelianum commissioned me to design a custom robot and a workshop plan that could be held regularly with school groups in their center.
I’m creating a custom robot template together with a laser-cut stencil and building instructions.
The workshops have to be short and allow participants to build a robot in just 45 minutes.
The robot will come in two variants: with and without electronics.
A great advantage of cardboard robots for this kind of workshop is that when participants build a robot figurine without electronics, they can take it home after the workshop—the cost of materials for one robot is less than a quarter of a dollar! After all, it’s just a small sheet of cardboard and a few nuts and bolts.
When the project is finished, I’ll be happy to show you the final design—and maybe it will be a nice occasion to talk about the design process behind cardboard robots.
See you soon, and cheers! 🎉
