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Four Robots, Four Bets on a Screen Face

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About This MicroSim

Cozmo, Vector, Miko, and Buddy agreed on exactly one thing: a robot's face should be a screen. Everything else went four separate directions, from tank treads to a full navigating base, from toy shelves to classrooms. This infographic breaks each robot into the same four design dimensions so you can differentiate them fairly. Your goal is to contrast those choices with what happened to each product, and to notice that the screen face is not what separated the survivors from the shutdowns.

How to Use

  1. Click any card to expand it. You will see that robot's face style, mobility, primary interaction mode, target buyer, and business outcome.
  2. Hover over a robot's illustration to read a one-line caption naming its specific screen-as-face design detail.
  3. Click Compare Mobility to show the mobility line on all four cards at once, from Cozmo's tank treads to Buddy's room-navigating base.
  4. Click Compare Outcome to recolor each card's border by what happened to that product. A color key appears below the cards.
  5. Click Reset to collapse every card and turn both comparison views off.

Iframe Embed Code

You can add this MicroSim to any web page by adding this to your HTML:

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<iframe src="sims/robot-design-approach-infographic/main.html"
        height="812px"
        width="100%"
        scrolling="no"></iframe>

Lesson Plan

Grade Level

9-12 (High School)

Duration

10-15 minutes

Prerequisites

  • Can name the four robots covered in this chapter: Cozmo, Vector, Miko, and Buddy.
  • Understands that a screen-based face animates its expressions instead of moving physical parts.
  • Knows that a product's target buyer shapes its price and its features.
  • Has read the chapter timeline of when each robot launched.

Activities

  1. Exploration (5 min): Expand all four cards and copy the five fields into a comparison table of your own, one row per robot.
  2. Guided Practice (5 min): Turn on Compare Mobility alone and rank the four robots from least mobile to most mobile. Then turn on Compare Outcome and check whether your ranking predicts the outcomes. It does not.
  3. Assessment (5 min): Write two sentences naming the design dimension that best separates the surviving product from the discontinued ones, and cite the card evidence you used.

Assessment

  • Correctly fills in a four-by-five comparison table using only the cards.
  • Names at least two design dimensions on which the four robots disagree.
  • Explains why the shared screen-based face cannot by itself explain the different outcomes.
  • Uses evidence from a specific card, not a general opinion, to support the claim.

References

  1. Anki (Wikipedia) - History of the company behind Cozmo and Vector, including its 2019 shutdown.
  2. Digital Dream Labs - The company that acquired Anki's assets and revived Vector.
  3. Social Robot (Wikipedia) - Background on robots designed for human interaction and expression.
  4. Blue Frog Robotics - The company developing the Buddy home companion robot.