Chapter 1 — Stock Robot
Chapter 1 — Stock Robot
“If I only had a brain…”
The mBot2 arrived in a box. Ziggy, aged 6, helped unpack it. It had wheels. It had sensors. It could follow a line on the floor, or stop when it detected an obstacle.
It did not have a brain.
Like the Scarecrow in Wizard of Oz, it could do things — it could move, it could sense, it could make sounds. But it couldn’t think. It couldn’t listen to a child ask a question and give a real answer. It couldn’t navigate a room with purpose. It couldn’t tell you the Arsenal score.
That felt like an opportunity.
The Hardware
The mBot2 is a solid foundation:
- CyberPi — an ESP32-based microcontroller that handles sensors and motors
- Ultrasonic sensors — for obstacle detection
- Encoder motors — for precise movement
- RGB LEDs — for visual feedback
- Speaker — for audio output
- Wi-Fi — for connectivity
Out of the box, it runs MicroPython. You can program it in Python directly on the device, or via Bluetooth/USB. It’s designed for education — so the API is clean, the docs are good, and it’s genuinely hackable.
What it doesn’t have: a camera, a microphone, internet connectivity in any meaningful sense, or any ability to understand natural language.
Those were the gaps. Those became the project.
What Doesn’t Change
One constraint from the start: the kids use this thing. Ziggy is 6. Lev is 2. Any system has to:
- Respond in under 3 seconds for simple commands
- Never say anything inappropriate
- Be honest when it doesn’t know something
- Be fun, not just functional
That shaped every technical decision that followed.