Credit: Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments has announced in Europe the TI-InnovatorTM Rover, the company’s first robotics solution for middle and high school students that makes learning STEM subjects a moving experience. Students can write programs on their TI graphing calculators that get Rover’s wheels turning and their minds learning in a fun, interactive and hands-on way.
Rover connects to the TI-Innovator Hub and either a TI-84 Plus CE-T or TI-Nspire CX graphing calculator that many students already have and drives interest and curiosity in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects. Students without any exposure to coding or robotics can get started by writing a basic program to make Rover do things like draw, dance or even crash.
“We created Rover to demystify robotics and give students who might be intimidated by programming an easy on-ramp to learn to code,” said Peter Balyta, Ph.D., president of TI Education Technology. “Given the sheer joy we have seen on students’ faces as they learned to code during our testing phase, we are excited to see how Rover will inspire more young minds through robotics.”
Students can team up to use Rover and are encouraged to work collaboratively to explore different STEM concepts.
They can program Rover to put math and science in motion, adding a physical dimension to verbal, symbolic and graphic representations. Rover also provides an accessible on-ramp to more advanced coding, STEM and robotics projects.
Rover was built specifically for use in the classroom and includes a rechargeable battery, color sensor, distance sensor, LED display, gyroscope and marker holder to trace on paper. This calculator-controlled robotic car will be available for purchase in Europe in Spring.
TI further strengthened its education offerings today with the announcement of its newest educational solution for the university classroom, the TI Robotics System Learning Kit (TI-RSLK). The TI-RSLK is a low-cost robotics kit and classroom curriculum, which provides university students a deeper understanding of how electronic system designs work.
TI believes education fosters growth of individuals, of companies, of economies. To equip today’s generation to become tomorrow’s problem-solvers, we must grow the pipeline of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)-capable students. TI is doing this by investing in education initiatives and areas that help both teachers and students alike love, understand and apply STEM subjects toward real-world issues.
Worldwide TI encourages the use of TI’s technology that helps teachers teach and students learn. It is TI’s belief that fun, interactive learning tools and resources nurture natural curiosity in how and why things work, inspiring future engineers, and even tomorrow’s scientists, mathematicians, doctors and teachers.
