Picoh Is a Weird Little Robot Head Designed to Teach You Programming

Have you ever wanted to learn how to program robots? Of course you have! But where do you even start? There are so many robots kits on the market and their focus is usually on the assembly, with programming as an after thought. Even when they’re intended to help you learn to code, it’s usually only dull stuff like “drive forward, then turn right.” Picoh is different, and was designed specifically to help you learn programming in a fun way.

The Ohbot Picoh just launched on Kickstarter, and you only need to watch the pitch video to see why it’s so interesting. Unlike most robots, Picoh isn’t ambulatory. It’s just an expressive little head mounted on a small pedestal. So, what do you program? Two things: the movement over its head, strange mechanical lips, and lively LED eyes, and its personality and capabilities. The idea is that no two Picoh robots will be the same, because they act according to your own custom code.

Picoh can be programmed through the Ohbot app, which utilizes visual block-based code. With that, you can control every aspect of Picoh’s functionality, and even take advantage of the AI-enabled Cloud Brain for machine learning. It features speech recognition and text-to-speech in many languages, a touch-sensitive nose for interaction, and RGB LEDs throughout to convey emotions. If you prefer good ol’ fashioned text-based code, those functions are all accessible through a Python control library.

If you’re interested in this oddball robot, the Kickstarter campaign will be running until March 23rd. Super early birds can get a Picoh robot, along with the companion app, for $99. Rewards are expected to ship in May of this year.