Want to teach to program? Give them a robot buddy. His eyes are wide, like ET’s or Johnny Five’s. His skin mimics the indestructible plastic found in LEGO. Even his name sounds like a beloved pet. Sparki may be a complex Arduino robot, but he’s (he looks like a he) has been designed from the ground up for children. Sparki is the latest creation by ArcBotics, a Kickstarter-born company building open robotics platforms. “After our first successful Kickstarter for Hexy the Hexapod, we were approached by many who asked, do you have anything for beginners?” Joe Schlesinger explains. “When we looked around, we saw that other educational robots were very expensive, difficult to use, lacked features, or had closed designs.”Read Full Story