Thames & Kosmos | Robotics Smart Machines: Rovers & Vehicles | Kids 8+ | STEM Kit builds 8 Robots | Color Manual to help with assembly | Requires tablet or smartphone

Never disappointed with Thames & Kosmos kits to take our 12 yr old son to the next level

My 11 year old loves this.

We received this product last night and began to build it this morning. Within 30 minutes of playing with it, one of the two wheel motors failed, only one motor would work in both forward and reverse. We contacted the Thames & Kosmos customer service and described how we troubleshot the problem and how we came to the conclusion that the motor was indeed bad. I didn't think I would hear anything back from this company due to the holiday season, I was wrong. Within 60 minutes of posting on their site, we got a reply back from the manufacturer. They stated that they would send out a replacement motor to us at no charge, which is great. I was really impressed with their response time! My kids really love the product, and were able to change the position of the sensors to allow the robot to still use the sensors but in the reverse direction. It is not ideal, but at least they can play with it. The app that you use to program the robot is amazing, my kids were able quickly navigate the system and put their robot into action. Aside from the motor failing so quickly, I wish the robot could move a little quicker. We are using it on hardwood floors and it is still slow. We have used the Dash Robot system in the past, and this little guy is way quicker. Overall its a good product, we look forward to maximizing the potential of our new robot.

Nice set for price

I have been trying to build the Dozer Bot for two days now and and can not figure out what I may be doing wrong. I build it the best I can tell by the instructions but it is still not right. I think the manufacturer blew it on this particular bot?

I'd love to give this a better review. The parts seem quite sturdy and the instructions are well laid out for my 9 year old to follow the problem and the reason for the 3 star is the iOS app states it supports 8.0+ in the manual and in the item description. See the attached image it requires 10.3+ I bought this kit because it supported her old iPad. I'm waiting on the vendors response. I'd really hate to send this back because the kiddo loves it.

Very good

Few things make learning as cool and fun as this kit. This is the kind of toy that you can be virtually positive your kids will remember 20 years from now. I'm a middle aged man and I even had a lot of fun helping out with it. This is a beginner's kit and does a lot for you, but that's part of the beauty. Any kid can take this and have a blast. If your kids have already started playing with robotics, they can use their imaginations to build something much more complex. You can build up to 8 different machines and they actually run based on the code you write. The code isn't anything to be intimidated by, there's a visual IDE that is very intuitive and you certainly don't need to understand programming constructs to be able to use it. In fact it's a great lead in b/c it starts out fully visual, but as your kids want to do more, they are going to be encouraged to do more and more complex and imaginative things. The IDE runs on a phone or a tablet, so you will need one or have access to one for them to take advantage of it, but it'll run on most any device you have for them or one of yours. Additionally, there's a guide that's over 50 pages that walks through how to build them out and what can be done with them. This serves not only to explain and teach but give them some ideas on what kinds of things they can use. Going back to the IDE, that's one of the coolest aspects of this. The product description mentions that it can be controlled using the sensors, that end up using the same concept of sonar. I was very skeptical at first but in reality, that's exactly how it works in terms of object detection and navigation. Build 8 motorized machines controlled by programs and an ultrasound sensor. The packaging mentions that this is a follow up product to a previous one. I did not have the pleasure of trying the other one out but this kit is one of the coolest toys you can get for parent child projects. It's wholesome, entertaining, easy to use and it's exactly the type of toy you want your kid pushing bedtime boundaries using. And as an adult, you don't have to spend very much time learning how things work, but you can assist in assembly and build all sorts of cool, *MOTORIZED* bots that can intelligently detect collisions and objects and navigate accordingly. I'm going to speculate that exactly 0 families have returned this after buying it and that there's probably some ridiculously high number of people that buy additional kits. (as a hint, if you build this, make a point of integrating it with your household pets. Since they move and are curious, they provide perfect 'obstacles' and will really let you test navigation ideas>0