Q.bo STEM Robot – A Friend for your Kids

With wide ranging lockdowns around the world, a new normal has emerged forcing many workers to work from home.  Children are also spending less time in schools and in some places, they skipped schools altogether where they interact with other people and cultivate life skills.  In short, kids would have played less, interacted less and learned less during the pandemic.

On the other hand, higher pressure is piled on parents and caretakers of such kids.  All of the sudden, they have to wear the hat of the educator aside from their professional careers as they worked from home.  It made us appreciate our teachers more and thankful for their work in educating our kids for a better tomorrow.

A glimmer of hope shines in 2021 as vaccinations rise.  However, it will be a while before things can get back to post pandemic normal.  Some things will continue to stick, such as the culture of work from home where many employers find little or no decrease in productivity.  It is likely that white collar and desk bound employees will find themselves in a new normal where they work from home more often than they would before the pandemic.  The demands on such workers with young children will be unabated.

It is exactly with this problem statement that we adapt Q.bo STEM robot to work with children.  Unlike voice assisted devices with Siri or Alexa which are conversational, Q.bo STEM robot is fully interactive.

The new Q.bo STEM robot will tell stories accompanied by visual cues, play abstract strategy games and have lesson plans for learning.  It will not replace a human educator, but it will be the next best thing.  Children with higher technical competencies can even program the robot to perform a trick or two.  Perhaps, parents can get a couple of hours without disruption as they attend to that all important web call from work while their children learn something from the STEM robot.