Stony Brook, NY, USA 11790, October 22, 2019
Today Mechanismic Inc. launched a crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo for its SnappyXO STEM/Robotics kits in several different tiers. The lowest priced kit starts at $39 called Mechanics Kit to help younger children engage with simple STEM activity while having fun. The highest priced Advanced Robot kit goes up to $169 at a discount of 26%.
SnappyXO is being developed from a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and several NY state agencies and organizations, which have supported it from conceptions to implementation. It is the world’s first design-driven, modular, most affordable, and intuitive robotics product meant for students all the way from elementary to college students, and makers and hobbyists.
SnappyXO consists of a patent-pending hardware, consisting of high-precision, laser-cut plastic beams, plates, connectors, gears, wheels, etc. and a mechatronics kit containing sensors, actuators, microcontroller, and misc. electronics. The mechatronics kit components are open source, inexpensive, and off-the-shelf, which means that users can rapidly move on to another programming platform or buy alternative electronic components as the need arises.
It also consists of two apps. One is called MotionGen, which is the only Android and iOS app of its kind in the world, developed on top of the state of the art research in Mechanisms and Robotics done at Stony Brook University. The app allows one to design and simulate robot motions. Users can design a robot motion in the app and can prototype it using the hardware and see it come to life! The second one is ArduinoBlue, which allows users to control robot motions over Bluetooth. The app works with Arduino family of Micrcontroller boards and SnappyXO Robot kit.
SnappyXO was invented by Dr. Anurag Purwar, who is a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stony Brook University and an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Inventors. In 2015, he began to teach a new Freshman Design Robotics class created with support from a Teaching Innovation grant from the NY state. It was then when he realized that to support his learning outcomes, he needed a robotics platform that would provide an authentic and affordable design-driven education. He wanted to ensure that the students had adequate exposure to design, coding and circuits through a project-based approach.
Mechanismic Inc., has been working with several K-12 schools, STEM camps, after-school STEM/Robotics programs, hackathons, and maker fairs to fine-tune the and beta test the hardware. “In the summer of 2019, we managed to create a unified hardware platform that would work with a range of children above age 7-8”, says the COO Agranya Jampala. The CTO Barry Chuang added, “we have been working tirelessly to decrease the cost of the kit to the lowest possible by working diligently with our partners and suppliers, and finally we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel”. The co-founder Dr. Anurag Purwar’s dream is to make robotics education extremely affordable so that every child can have a robot kit of their own, which would grow with them. He believes that this would lower the barriers between learning and playing and would enable our children to use it without fear or failure.
The estimated delivery date of the SnappyXO kits backed on Indiegogo is December 2019. Those wishing to claim a perk should visit the Indiegogo website at https://igg.me/at/snappyxo. Media wishing to contact Mechanismic should reach out at [email protected].
About Mechanismic Inc.
Mechanismic Inc. is designing and manufacturing an innovative DIY Robotics Education and Play product for K-12 schools, post-secondary institutions, students, makers and hobbyists, and for industrial prototyping. Our products are also being sold to the informal STEM learning centers, such as museums, libraries, STEM programs and camps, hackathons, and robotics competitions. Mechanismic Inc. is a Stony Brook University spin off with technology invented in the Computer-Aided Design and Innovation Lab in the Mechanical Engineering department. It is a C-Corp registered and located in NY state.