Cozmo the robot!

activities, FLL

The robot Cozmo showed up for Christmas at our house!  Cozmo is set up to learn as you play with him.  I did find that I have to hook my phone to the Cozmo wireless network each time we want to play with Cozmo – which is not the easiest and not really something my youngest will set up for himself.  He’s using my phone though so I’m usually involved in him playing with Cozmo anyway.

One of the first things Cozmo did was learned to say my son’s name.  Giving him a personality.  My son was then excited to play the game of tap with him.  The interested though seemed to wane when Cozmo lost a couple times and acted sad.  I saw my son trying to console Cozmo over the loss.

Yesterday I ended up completing the goals for the day.  My youngest did get a little involved with showing me what I was doing wrong, but didn’t seem to want to do any of the training himself.  I’m hoping that as time goes on he will gain interest again as Cozmo develops more personality.

Only time will tell how this robot will go with my son.  For most kids I think the personality and daily goals will interest them and give them something new to interest them.

We are just getting ready to start day 3, so far we have learned:

  • Cozmo learned our name
  • Playing Tap
  • Stacking Blocks
  • Knocking Over Blocks
  • Play Cozmo Says
  • Keep Away
  • Doing a Wheelie
  • and more!

Playing the game of keep away, involves bringing the block close to Cozmo and the robot trying to grab it while the child tries to pull it away right at the last second.  I could hear my son laughing, and trying it again while playing.  – I’d take a video, but he uses my phone! Every so often the robot gets the cube, and when it misses the robot says ‘awwwww’.

The emotion part of the robot is hard for my little one to process.  He can’t handle making the robot sad, so I’m not sure how it will work for him.  He tends to avoid things like this.  We didn’t even make it through the whole movie The Secret Life of Pets, because the pets were too mean.  So if your child is ASD it’s something to keep in mind.  I do hope that the robot will interest him and help him, so we will keep trying… as emotions from others are tough to manage.

I’m waiting for my older two to find out about the Cozmo SDK Beta that is available at developer.anki.com.  It will be interesting to see what happens when everyone wants the robot!