RoBox was first created in 2017 by a team of 7 students from Westlake High School, working together to create a very low-cost, take-home robotics kit which could be used as a teaching tool in student run robotics camps. The students were reacting to a challenge by Coach Norman Morgan to create a kit that allowed less financially fortunate students the opportunity to learn robotics, by making it 1/10th the cost of other kits.
The kit offers students the opportunity to build, program, and customize their own bot and includes a drag-and-drop programming interface with a variety of programming challenges. Since its inception, the RoBox team has hosted student camps where campers benefited from their use of RoBox as a learning tool and the RoBox team benefited from observations and qualitative feedback allowing for the continued refinement of their RoBox prototype.
RoBox was also used by FRC 2468 this year as the team engaged the eager youth at ClubZ with STEM activities over a period of several weeks. ClubZ is an after-school program which caters to economically-underserved children.
In addition to prepping for summer camps, the current 10 member RoBox team will continue to incorporate additional programming features and mechanical functionality while exploring further cost efficiencies and commercialization paths.
