Educational robotics is a rapidly expanding field full of incredible, diverse, and sometimes complex machines. All kids love robots, but sometimes the robotic toys on the market can get a bit too complex—not to mention expensive—for the young children in our lives. The search continues to provide teachers and parents with an entry-level robot that ensures little ones aren’t left out of STEM learning.
This week, I experimented with one of our simpler robotics toys, the Mini MiP, which is developed by WowWee. The Mini MiP is a smaller, less complex version of WowWee’s MiP robot, but it boasts the same capacity for learning! It has a lot of the same features and capabilities as its older cousin, but has simplified them to make it a more accessible toy for even the youngest kids.
Taking the Mini MiP out of the box, the first thing I noticed was its compact size. It’s the perfect size to sit comfortably in the palm of my hand and comes with a remote of similar size. The remote has two buttons, which tell the little robot to either drive forward or turn to the left. Essentially, the Mini MiP is an RC (remote-controlled) robot; it’s fully drivable and isn’t daunted by obstacles like carpets, meaning that as soon as kids pop in its batteries, they can take their new friend with them almost anywhere they go!
I found the Mini MiP very easy to operate. The two simple buttons on the remote indicated everything I needed to know without a complex instruction manual or trial and error with unknown processes. It was very satisfying to drive around our techXplore room, and I know that if I had it in my house, I’d probably get a lot of mileage (pardon my pun) out of it.
If you ask me, the Mini MiP makes for a great introduction to robotics for kids as young as 4 years old. It’s simple and effective with a size that will appeal to younger children as well as enthusiastic hobbyists of all ages. I think that playing with the Mini MiP would be a great way to introduce kids to the idea of robotics by handing them something fun and easy to use that is also technologically advanced and complex in its own way.
Driving the Mini MiP can open up a dialogue about how remote-controlled electronics work, and also about coding. Students can use the Mini MiP to explore how it knows what to do just from them pushing a button, for example. I would recommend this little ‘bot to any parent or teacher wishing to introduce their young student(s) to the future of STEM.
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