Editor’s Note: This contest is closed. Oxford University estimates that up to 47 percent of U.S. jobs could be automated in the next 20 years. Given this, it’s vital to implement robotics heavily into today’s education programs, so that students keep pace with the rate of innovation. DFRobot wanted to build a robot that makes learning robotics fun for children, and they did just that with the open-source Vortex robotics kit. Now we’re giving a pair away (a $119 value) just as the kids start going back to school. The contest is open until Sept. 30 at 11:59 PM ET. All you have to do to enter is fill out the short form at the bottom of this page. We’ll announce the winner no later than Monday, Oct. 5, 2015. Click here for complete contest details. Vortex, which can connect to iOS and Android devices, is designed for kids as young as six-years-old. The robot comes ready to play a number of games, including bumping fight, golf, driving, and soccer. All you have to do to get started with these games is add four AA batteries to Vortex and download the Vortexbot app from the App Store.

But the idea is that children will want to learn how to make Vortex do more with custom programming. Lab Puppies For Sale Richmond VaTo do so, download the WhenDo app from the App Store for a variety of tutorials so kids can practice programming basics and customize their games. Laminate Flooring Insulation UnderlayDFRobot says WhenDo is intuitive with its drag-and-drop interface, you might have to help your kid(s) really master the app.Battery Operated Christmas Lights Home Depot “We believe kids can benefit a lot from robotics, in identifying their own challenges, learning how stuff works, solving new problems, motivating themselves to complete a project, working together, inspiring others, and sharing with others,” the company says.

Vortex, which is open-source and compatible with Arduino and Scratch, can navigate obstacles, detect lines and report back by using infrared, grey scale, and sound speakers. The wheeled robot features ground/line following sensors, proximity sensors and encoders for speed control.Academics, commercial robot manufacturers and hobbyists showed off their skills and creations at Stanford's second-annual Robot Block Party.A small visitor to the Stanford Robot Block Party is enchanted. They seem to do it all by themselves: Vacuum, move ordinary objects from one place to another, even drive a car. But behind every autonomous robot is a human, whether in the role of academic, industrialist or hobbyist. The people creating the gizmos showed off their machines and the technology behind them at Stanford's second-annual Robot Block Party. Held late last week on campus at the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab, the event hosted about a dozen leading commercial robot designers as well as researchers from Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the Center for Automotive Research.

The gathering was sponsored by the Law School's Center for Internet and Society as part of National Robotics Week, a week of programs around the country designed to raise awareness about robotics and spark general interest in science, technology and mathematics. There were plenty of heavyweights, like the PR2 Mobile Manipulator. Hailing from Willow Garage and weighing in with a $400,000 price tag, the machine uses 3-D sensors to navigate the world and has two arms and pincer grips to do any number of tasks through open-source programming. And there was the much more nimble XV-11, a $400 autonomous vacuum cleaner made by Neato Robotics that uses its laser scanner to map a room and go about its way sucking up dirt from rugs and hardwood floors. "It does really well with pet hair," said Neato's Dave Wyland. "It took about five years to develop, but it's a pretty straightforward thing." Then, of course, there were the underdogs. Members of Silicon Valley's HomeBrew Robotics Club were out in force with their mechanical concoctions – bits of pegboard, children's toys and shopping cart wheels strung together with duct tape and bits of wire.

Here is Springy, a triple-decker robot that holds a laptop on one level, processors on another and the guts of two television remote controllers on a third. Hold an infrared beacon (in this case, a heavily altered Pringles potato chip can) in front of it, and it will follow you around. And here is Camp Peavy, the man who built the contraption 12 years ago. "No matter what you do in robotics, you're going to find yourself on the cutting edge of the technology," Peavy said. "Any application you come up with on your own probably hasn't been done yet." It's that spirit of creativity and innovation that the Robot Block Party aims to stoke. Once the stuff of science fiction, robots are fast becoming everyday items. "At first, people will have them in their homes to do things like get the laundry, clear the dishes and collect the garbage," said Wayne Gramlich, president of the HomeBrew Robotics Club. "But there's also a crying need to have them do more advanced things, like elder care."

Gramlich says the day will soon come when a robot will pop a meal into a microwave oven and serve it to a patient unable to move on his or her own. "It's just a matter of time," he said. "Robots are going to be helping us more and more."It looks innocent enough—a circular disk that hums around, picking up dirt and dust on your living room floor. It's an iconic, boring slice of Americana at this point. But it’s not just a smart vacuum cleaner: The Roomba is one of the most popular robots for do-it-yourself hacking and tinkering. In fact iRobot, creators of the Roomba, released the Create 2 just for that purpose: It's a hackable version of the robot that’s used for research, science, and technology education.Roomba’s launch in 2002 was the first time connected devices entered the home, a landmark experience to be sure. It ushered in a greater understanding of how robots would ultimately overtake our homes; through its simplistic design, the device got people accustomed to letting robots do the work.

Ever since, the little robot has experienced its fair share of fame—from viral cat videos to a longstanding joke on the hit show Parks and Recreation (DJ Roomba, for the uninitiated). Along the way hackers slowly began using the Roomba to tinker with side-projects, both manipulating and controlling the device itself through sensors, the device’s circuit board, and through third-party devices like Nintendo’s Wii-mote. A handful of Roombas were even programmed to turn into a Pac-Man game come to life. But what makes the Roomba so appealing to hackers? Why control a bot that was meant to clean up hair and dirt? Well for starters, the company encourages hardware hackers to use the Roombas for experimenting, and ships each Roomba with a serial port—an external connection to a computer that transmits bits of data—with an application programming interface.“IRobot was founded by passionate roboticists who are hackers at heart,” Colin Angle, iRobot CEO, told the Daily Dot via email.

“They understand better than anyone the infatuation with hacking and programming existing software. Given the fact that Roomba has proven to be a very useful, durable and dependable platform, many have found it ideal to leverage for research purposes. It was designed that way.”There are hundreds of resources for reprogramming the device, including Hacking Roomba, a comprehensive book and website published in 2007 dedicated to teaching people how to turn their vacuum into a robot that sings, paints, and acts as a Wi-Fi hotspot, among a number of other hacks. There’s a subreddit where people meet to discuss hacks and Roomba fails. And the company also provides its own documentation that explains how to override the existing controls and create custom applications for it. Roomba’s code is written in JavaScript, an accessible programming language of HTML and the Web, and runs in Node.js, an open-source JavaScript platform. And since there’s a Node.js library for the Roomba, it’s easy to get started if you already have some coding knowledge.

Once you’ve decided to hack your vacuum, you’ll join a growing number of makers eager to help find the next out-of-character Roomba quirk.The possibilities run the gamut, from the totally ordinary to the seemingly unimaginable. Edging toward the latter, software engineer Martin Atkins is turning a Roomba he found on Craigslist into a telepresence robot that lets people control the device from the comfort of their own home. “Just as with Arduino and Raspberry Pi, joining an existing community is great to get started because there are loads of other people out there who have already solved problems in different ways and lots of existing projects to draw inspiration from,” Atkins said, referring to the open-source electronics platforms popular among makers for prototyping hardware. “For our telepresence robot project, we found lots of other folks who had built similar things and drew a little inspiration from each of them, making our platform largely a hybrid of our favorite parts from other people's designs.”

Atkins and his colleagues wanted a telepresence robot for members of their office's remote team who could only be reached via meeting rooms. So Atkins decided to mount a laptop on a Roomba, and while Google Hangouts ran, attendees could be a part of group meetings. By pairing the computer with a Node.js application that can monitor and execute requests to control the robot via a REST API, people in the hangout can move the robot forward and roll around the office. It sounds more complex than it is:Beyond the community and relatively straightforward tutorials and programming required to build different apps and features for the Roomba, Atkins said it’s the robot’s three-tiered interface that lets hackers change how much the robot controls itself that attracted him. Passive Mode, Safe Mode, and Full Mode are already built into the Roomba. Passive Mode is the most limited, with only the default settings in place, and provides programmers with limited control over what the bot actually does.

In Safe Mode, the robot’s sensors can detect cliffs or elevation changes and will stop moving to make sure it doesn’t topple over. Full Mode turns off those safety mechanisms and lets you have full control over the motors and sensors. “This progression made it really easy for me to get started and see a result,” he said. “The telepresence robot project is using ‘Safe Mode’ as a failsafe against a remote person accidentally driving the robot down a staircase.”Recognizing the potential for the Roomba to become a hacker’s top choice for tinkering, in 2007 iRobot released its first version of the Create line. Create 2 is the company’s latest programmable robot. It launched in December and is a refurbished version of the original Roombas—though without the ability to clean anything. “Most hackers want a project that they can get working on quickly,” Angle said. “Create 2 is provides a ready-made platform that is backed by more than 12 years of Roomba development and more than 12 million robots sold.”