Education robots

• Four-axis desktop arms for 3D printing, laser engraving and drawing.
• A six-axis desktop cobot for senior and vocational classes.
• Conveyors, vision kits, sensor kits and a mobile platform around them.

The range is a ladder rather than a catalogue. A younger class starts on a four-axis arm doing one thing at a time. A senior or vocational class moves to a six-axis arm and meets the wrist, the tool flange and the reason a robot has more joints than it looks like it needs.

Before the arms, the floor robots and coding blocks used from age three have no screen at all.

A classroom is harder on a robot than a factory in one respect: it is handled by someone new every period, and it has to survive that and still be accurate on Friday. These are built for that, which is why the bases are heavy and the joints are covered.

Most of the teaching is in what goes around the arm. A conveyor turns a pick into a line. A camera turns a fixed position into a search. A sensor kit turns a program into a response. Each one is a lesson the arm on its own cannot teach.