A group of the brightest engineers of Silicon Valley founded a new startup "Play-i" which aims to develop an educational toy that lets children age five and below to program robots.
In this world where technologically-challenged people are being left out, parents surely wonder how their kids can survive a world dominated by computers. Driven by this social dilemma, former Google Head of Consumer Payments Vikas Gupta founded a startup creating robots that children can program.
Gupta observed that the U.S. educational system comes quite short in producing programmers and he wanted to change that through this startup.
"The question was, how can we make something that's fun, that's extremely inviting, and gets parents and kids into the magical world of programming at a young age?" Gupta told USA Today.
"Play-i" aims to deliver an easy learning experience in programming robots. It has two robots named Bo and Yana. These robots have dazzling orbs and with an iPad, kids can make those orbs move, make sounds, and flash lights. Children can also customize Bo and Yana's functions and eventually discover the steps on basic programming on their own.
Bo can play a miniature xylophone and if programmed to do so, it could play songs non-stop while Yana can be set up to imitate sounds and to flash lights.
Investors, including Google Ventures, funded Gupta's team $1 million to get them on the road as early as possible.
Andy Wheeler, Google Ventures' partner told USA Today, "It's a tangible way for kids to get programming at a much younger age. Hopefully, within a few years they are expanding into retail and expanding the software and hardware components ... to allow the toy to grow with the child."
The company plans to deliver 1,500 units of the completed robots to customers by June. Bo costs $149 while Yana costs $49. They will then follow-up with the children to hear feedback. Gupta also plans to place the robots into Techbridge, an after school program for girls in Oakland, Calif., for testing.
Here is a video demonstration of Bo and Yana interacting with children.
