Xiaomi MITU Robot: not a murderer, but in itself

Remember yourself as a child: New Year, Christmas tree, mountains of delicious food, rest at home and on the skating rink, interesting gifts, holidays near parents and friends. One, two - and now the tree is showered and painfully pricked in slippers, and beyond the window there comes a long and hopeless third quarter. Reluctance to go out in the cold, cram, write checks and listen to endless tirades about the most important quarter of the year. Actually, the same is now experiencing our children and younger brothers and sisters. Parents are faced with an important task: not to bring the child to a nervous breakdown and to keep the interest and incentive to study in more humane ways than a belt.

Nice to MITU

Pampering with toys is not an option, it will only relax the student and once again distract from classes. It is also better to hide the tablet until the weekend, it is painfully temptingly delaying. So, we are looking for a balance between play and study and find kits for robotics. Damn expensive, their value almost the average salary of a specialist! But not everything is so hopeless - Xiaomi came to the aid of parents with their programmable robot-designer Xiaomi MITU , which, by the way, costs only $ 125.99 on Gearbest (and with a MITU coupon, at all $ 109.99), i.e. 7 800 rubles, four times cheaper than analogs.

The child will not just play, he will learn the basics of programming and the theory of algorithms, will gain an understanding of engineering work, understand how systems function and are controlled, learn concepts of sensor, sensor, microcontroller, angle and so on. This is a very useful device that will further help the child to perceive such objects as algebra, geometry and physics. Not to mention computer science - programming skills, flowcharts, positional number systems, etc., will perfectly fit the prepared ground.
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So, it's time to get to know each other.

He is brutal and handsome

The robot, or rather, its component parts, are packed in a bright and compact box for such a thing. The first thing that the buyer sees when opening the box is the brain of the future robot: a well-assembled, non-loosening and non-creaking box with a rich inner world: a microchip, a gyroscope, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi sensors, and a battery. Additional sensors with USB Type C need to be bought separately - depending on what you are going to design. On the block are located the power button, microphone, 4 ports and the Reset button in case of a sudden uprising of the machines.



Plastic parts of the future robot are packed in sealed bags with funny safety instructions, from which, for example, you can learn that the parts can not be eaten, set on fire, wind hair on them and that they can slip on painfully. But how to step on the device - this is the most common and painful injury! And it would not hurt the warning “Keep away from cats” - small details look like a great toy in case you want to play cat hockey and drive the trophy under the sofa. In general, the essence is this - it is best to assemble the robot on a clean table, and not on a bed or on the floor, especially since the bundle includes a convenient box with cells for sorting all the spare parts. A box, alas, without a lid. At the bottom of the box, under the bags with the details, are the instructions with the QR code for downloading the application to the smartphone and the charger in the same stylish white-orange color.

The robot consists of 978 parts made of environmentally friendly, durable plastic with a casting accuracy of 0.005 mm, among which are fasteners, gears, lintels, wheels, and so on. Like all sets of this class, the Xiaomi MITU has an important advantage - it can be assembled and disassembled many times. Details are made in sober and pleasant colors, after assembly the robot looks technologically and even futuristic.



From these things you can assemble a robot or a dinosaur according to the instructions, and you can give free rein to your imagination and come up with your car, monster, dragon, terminator, etc. Here is how it looks in the assembly.

This guy is friends with his head

Programming Xiaomi MITU by using a set of commands on the screen of a mobile phone. Assignment of values ​​to variables, mathematical operations, generation of a random value on an interval, logical operations are supported. To assess the current state and the only subsequent action of the robot, the following line is provided:

if TRUE then 

To select an action after analyzing the current state:

 if TRUE then else 

You can also loop the program by the Loop operator and count the total run time of the program. The process looks like this:



On the one hand, you can be committed to classic programming in the console and IDE, but the robot is designed for children of the elementary - early secondary school (officially - 10 years old) and is very good for exploring a child who is not fan of developing a programmer. Working here with such buttons-functions, the child will learn the logic of the program, will understand the essence of the algorithm. And this, as is known, is the base from which everything should start. Assimilation of the order of actions is promoted by multi-colored lights for different types of commands - it is easier to remember the algorithm, understand it, and repeat it. In general, for programming we deal with a visual editor.



The remaining functions are much less similar to programming; they are rather buttons-switches: sound selection, delay, setting time, speed, angle of inclination to the surface, turning parameters, setting the engine speed, etc. Provides voice control system. In addition, the robot is equipped with two motors with a speed of up to 170 revolutions per minute and supports third-party sensors through four USB ports of the Type C interface, for example, infrared and ultrasonic sensors, and this is already a sweep for imagination. Here another problem is being solved - the development of the engineering skills of the young robotics.


In the heart (head?), Xiaomi MITU is an ARM Cortex M3 (STM32) microcontroller with a 32-bit infrastructure, due to which it counts and executes commands faster than its 8 and 16-bit congeners. This microcontroller is good for a robot of this class also by the fact that it supports power saving modes, it is able to hibernate entirely and by subsystems. By the way, the robot itself has a 1700 mAh battery, which allows it to work as long as 12 hours. The flash memory of a smart toy - 32 MB - is two times more than that of a distinguished competitor, but there is no support for a memory card.

The robot is compatible with Android 4.3 + and iOS 6 +. And this compatibility is not a lot of fun. The robot can be controlled through a special application on the smartphone. For example, you can draw an arbitrary route, and it will follow exactly the trajectory that you specified. You can also transmit information to the toy's gyroscope and generally control the mobile phone as a joystick.

But is this fun in vain?

We do not know whether Xiaomi will lobby its interests in schools and robotic circles. In any case, as long as they have no methodological basis, without which teachers simply cannot live. As it seems to us, it is for the better: the Xiaomi MITU robot is a set of the “child-parent” level (to the edge, elder brother or sister). That is, in addition to the skills that we describe in the line below, the interaction between adults and the child is so scarce today.

• The child acquires the skills of system and logical thinking, working with a controlled system.
  
  
• The child recognizes the nature of mechanical movement, friction, rolling, geometry and stereometry.
  
  
• The child becomes familiar with programming - with the right explanation, it also forms a special relationship with the tablet, computer, and smartphone. They will no longer be the only means of viewing cartoons and games - it is quite possible that the child will want to continue its development in this direction.
  
  
• The child gets acquainted with the Internet of things (IoT). Whether we want it or not, but then he and us live in peace with a growing number of sensors, smart devices and smart machines. The robot is very simple and clearly demonstrates how sensors and sensors work.
  
  
• A child perceives learning as a pleasant process - it is certainly extrapolated to school disciplines, especially “difficult” technical ones.
  
  
• The child is developing an awareness of his intellect and skills - he himself has assembled a robot that knows how to move! He is a design engineer!
  
  
• The interaction of fine motor skills, control of the programmable interface and work with the mobile application form an understanding of the interaction of systems, the influence of humans on mechanical systems.
  

In general, there are a lot of advantages. A minus, perhaps, one - one robot will one day become small, the forms will get bored. But it is precisely at this time that the moment of inventiveness comes - who knows how far the young designer will go in his research? Your task is to send and help, if required.

Is this robot alone?

In terms of such intelligent, programmable Chinese robots - almost completely alone. If you or your child are not attracted by the aggressive design of Xiaomi MITU, then on Gearbest you can find some more interesting models . For example, the well-known and beloved by all caring Wall-E is also ready to obey the commands of the owner. But precisely what to obey - he is controlled from the console, which gives him ready-made commands - from conversation to the transfer of emotions and dances. Of course, this is more entertainment than learning and will suit either small children or adult fans who tell the child how it all moves, works, captures objects, etc. Works Wall-E with 4 AA batteries. By the way, we have YTRF coupon on it, which turns the price into $ 99.99 .

Surely, news of how Sbertech is recruiting IT specialists has not passed you, and other companies are following its example. Today, everything from banks to brokers and carriers, begin to position themselves as technology companies. And such corporations need qualified specialists, and not at all those who have spent 5 years in high schools with old training programs. Self-education along with classical education is the only key to success. And it is necessary to teach the child to look for this key from an early age. This will solve many problems in the future.

What toys do you play with your children? Well, except for arduina and polivalk :)