“Linking” Youth to Coding–and Fun

Over Coffee® is headed for CES® 2020!  Here is one of our top podcast episodes from CES® 2019.

What if you could teach a child how to program an autonomous vehicle?

Thanks to San Diego-based educational technology company Robolink, that was not a hypothetical question.

At CES® 2019, in Las Vegas, we saw Robolink CEO Hansol Hong.

Robolink creates educational robot platforms for students, grades K through 12.  For CES® 2019, they had just launched another brand-new robotics kit: Zumi.

And Zumi, which is an autonomous-vehicle robot kit, is designed to teach kids of all ages how to program a self-driving vehicle!  Hansol and his staff have designed the kit to make artificial intelligence understandable for kids, and us "bigger kids".

When we spoke at CES® 2019, Robolink had just launched their Kickstarter campaign for Zumi.  Hansol said they raised $20,000 during the first day of the campaign!  (They would go on to raise $150,000, according to Robolink's website--tripling their Kickstarter goal of $50,000.)

And--Zumi had also won a "Best of CES®" award!

Zumi shipped in mid-2019.  According to Robolink's Facebook page, Purdue University listed her in their "Engineering Gift Guide" for the Christmas season.

But no matter how many other honors Robolink receives for excellent (and fun!) products, they may never have a better accolade than when we first met at the 2015 Orange County Mini Maker Faire.

At the time, Hansol and Sebastian Sanchez were exhibiting Robolink's twelve-robot kit, Rokit Smart.

A small boy, near the display, began to wail.  He was crying so loudly that we turned to see what disaster had occurred.

The problem?  It was time to go home, his father was taking him to the car--and he didn't want to leave the robots!

Our previous conversations with Hansol include a look at the Rokit Smart kit--and at Robolink's innovation for CES® 2016, the CoDrone.

We can only hope Robolink may be exhibiting at CES® 2020--because we can't wait to see what they'll come up with next!
On this edition of Over Coffee®, you will hear:

What the new educational kit, Zumi, can do for students;

Why Zumi is a female robot!;

How Hansol and his crew found out about the Innovation Award;

How Zumi works, for two different groups of students;

The development process which Hansol and his team employ, prior to marketing any robot;

What Hansol considers to be the most important lesson he has learned, as an educator and innovator, while creating his robotics kits.