Programming

Back in 2018, Elecrow hit Kickstarter with an electronics learning lab-in-a-box based around the Raspberry Pi. A 2nd generation crammed the lab into a laptop form factor. The latest version has launched on Kickstarter, and now goes all-in-one.

It can autonomously plan and execute thousand-step tasks. It can build and deploy entire software projects all by itself. It can research and fix bugs 7x better than OpenAI's GPT-4, and it trains and deploys its own custom AIs to solve problems.

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.

Badly bloodied by OpenAI's GPT-4, Google has struck back with a new, more powerful large language model (LLM) to upgrade Bard and create a suite of new AI services – starting with a model targeted at doctors. It also teased its next-gen Gemini AI.

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."

Last year, Hong Kong's MangDang gave programmers the chance to own a small hackable four-legged robot named the Mini Pupper, a kind of baby Spot. Now the team has returned to Kickstarter with a much-improved second generation robo-dog.

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.

Though Sphero is probably best known for the BB-8 droid it released in 2015, more recently the focus has been on helping to kickstart future coders with educational bots. Now the indi robocar becomes the company's first robot aimed at early learners.

Drone titan DJI has today added a new model to its recently launched Education division. The company aims to encourage robotics and AI tech learning with a package that includes a teeny drone, an intuitive mobile app and an exclusive curriculum.

Back in 2016, the BBC gave a million tiny computers to UK school kids for free. The micro:bit boards were designed as learning tools to help get youngsters into coding, and now the tiny computer for tiny hands has been updated.

Information can be encoded into many patterns, such as ones and zeroes for computers. A new proof of concept has been demonstrated to encode information into artificial molecules, which could enable programmable materials or new types of computers.

DJI is probably best known for its drones, but last year it launched an educational robot platform named after its annual RomoMaster Robotics Competition. Now the S1 has been joined by the EP Core, the first product in DJI's new Education branch.