Education

The XPeng Unicorn is a pony-sized robotic companion with the foundations to become much more. Shown to the world for the first time this week at the Bangkok International Motor Show, the Unicorn has the potential to become a market maker.

A desktop companion. An open-source education platform. An AI-powered robotics lab. Doly is all that and more. Technology startup Limibit out of Ontario, Canada, has launched on Kickstarter to bring the cute lil buddy bot to life.

The latest project from music education company Loog Guitars isn't a three-stringed Gibson classic to go with its pint-sized Fender Strat or Tele electrics, but a 37-key portable piano for kids of all ages.

For more than 10 years, Duolingo has been helping folks to learn a new language with ad-supported mini lessons designed to be fun and engaging. Now the company is taking its gamified model to music education.

For more than 10 years, Loog has been making learning to play a guitar a less daunting task for youngsters. Now the company has teamed up with Fender for a pint-sized Tele and Strat – each rocking three strings, a single pickup and a short skinny neck.

At a teaching symposium earlier this month, the world's only liberal arts university for deaf students explored the potential for remote learning by testing out a life-size holoportation device called the Epic from Proto Inc.

It's ironic that while violins are popular instruments for children to learn to play, they can also be pricey. The Montreal-based AVIVA Young Artists Program has set out to change that, by creating an inexpensive yet nice-sounding 3D-printed violin.

Minnesota company Upper Story has sent us its Turing Tumble, a fascinating educational toy that quietly tricks kids into inventing binary logic computers using nothing more than tiny marbles dropping through a series of clicky-clacky plastic pieces.

Luxonis has launched a hackable, open-source roving robot called rae that packs AI processing and machine learning, depth-sensing cameras, app control and fun RGB lighting into a pint-sized package designed "for every age, and every skill level."

Japanese musician and designer Yuri Suzuki has partnered with Sweden's Teenage Engineering for an update to a dinky little lo-fi vinyl record cutter and playback machine originally launched in 2020 in collaboration with Gakken.

In an example of a building's design reflecting its purpose comes a fish eye-shaped floating event space dedicated to salmon farming. The Salmon Eye is finished in 9,500 stainless steel scales that are meant to resemble the fish's silvery skin.

Building a robot and then getting it to do exactly what you want it to can be a serious head-scratcher. Taiwan's NUWA Robotics is looking to make things simpler with the RobotCreator DX, plus an easy-to-use cloud-based programming platform.