For the advancement & well-being of the civilized world
While every Explorer’s Library app is accompanied by a handbook designed to help adults support kids’ learning, we felt it was appropriate to make something for kids first and adults second for the first app in our Digital Toys series, The Robot Factory. The result is The Robot Factory Technical Manual.
While it is a (somewhat) technical manual, complete with (sometimes fictionalized) descriptions of parts, details about testing environments, and a code of ethics for young engineers (be industrious, ask questions, keep your ideas in secret notebooks…), it’s also a peek into some of our inspirations for the app.
The Mori monitor, for example, lets an engineer put their own face on their robot, and is named for the robotics professor, Masahiro Mori, who came up with the uncanny valley hypothesis.
The Kare unit is named for Susan Kare, the artist, designer, and master icon maker.
We offer loose interpretations of robot colors but the manual also notes that colors may serve as camouflage. Consider it fair warning: nothing is as we say it is in The Robot Factory — everything is up to the engineers.
