MIND Designer is an innovative intelligent robot that introduces children to simple coding and design. It guides your children through the process of learning mathematics, arithmetic and geometry. This is a great first start up robot for young children aged seven onwards. What I like about this set is that the robot is ready to play straight out of the box.
Inside this huge box, it comes with a MIND with transparent disc, three washable felt-tip marker pens (blue, black and red colour), folded double-sided board sheet, 10 A3 sheets, pull out List of Voice Commands card and instructions. As I mentioned earlier, there is no need for assembly, all you need is to insert four AA batteries into the batteries compartment at the back of MIND. You only need to remove the transparent disc if you want your robot to draw.
There are three modes to select on this robot. The mode switch (OFF, Free, Edu and App) can be found on the right-hand side of the robot. Always play your robot on a flat, smooth surface like a table or laminate/wood flooring. It does not move properly on carpet or tiled floor with grout lines.
The Free mode allows you to manually program your robot with complete freedom. You can program your robot with directional controls with up to 40 commands by pressing the control keypad. Please see the image below for the keypad’s instructions.
My children love using this function along with the folded double-sides board sheet. They both set themselves and each other challenges.
You can also programme MIND by using voice commands using the innovative voice recognition function. To switch on the voice recognition function, you will need the switch to be on Free mode and then press the Mic button to activate, which can be found on the right-hand side of the robot. There is a list of commands to communicate with your robot. If you don’t use the commands listed, your robot will not understand your programming. It is important that you only use the simple commands. Ms C had to practise a few times before she managed to get MIND to move. Patience is the key to success!
In this free mode, you can also get your robot to draw with the felt-tip pen either by manually programming it or with voice commands. Pencils or pens will not work properly on this robot. If the provided washable felt-tip pen ink runs out, it is always best to replace it with a washable felt-tip pen. Also to protect your floor surfaces or table, I would suggest you place thicker sheets of paper as the ink does leak when MIND is stationary.
For the Edu (Educational) mode, it lets you play by programming on either of the two boards: the yellow or blue. With the Arithmetic chart (yellow), MIND can be programmed to carry out arithmetical functions. The arithmetic questions are grouped into three levels of increasing difficulty. For the Easy level, you get to add and subtract with numbers up to 10. For the Medium level, you get to add and subtract with numbers from 10. As for the Difficult level, you get multiplication and division. The robot will allow you to skip to the next level of difficulty after you have correctly answered a certain number of questions.
With the Robotic Maze chart (blue), your child’s mission is to find their way out of the labyrinth through one of the locked doors on the corners of the board. There are objects to be collected and obstacles to avoid. This is great to encourage your child to solve quests and develop skills in logical thinking.
As for the App mode, you will need a smart device to download the free app via App Store, Google Play or FIRE OS. Once you have downloaded the app, the app will ask if you want to connect with your robot. If you choose to connect, the robot will synchronise with the device very quickly via Bluetooth and this was really straightforward for us.
This app has even more activities for your child to interact with the robot, to programme it and to explore it’s drawing capabilities. The activities of the app are grouped in areas of CODING and DRAWING. The CODING area is where you can create, save and edit your programme sequences. In the DRAWING section, you can play with the animal tangram and unlock new drawings to be traced or make free-hand drawings by dragging your finger on the screen. So far, we have only tried out free-hand drawings by just tracing with a finger on the screen. Once you are happy with your drawing, you can choose to send the drawing to your robot for him to draw out the shape. Again, the transfer of information from the app to the robot is very fast. One thing for sure is that MIND’s content is permanently updatable for limitless playability which is great to grow with your child.
Watch Mr K and Ms C explaining about the robot:
Ms C and Mr K really enjoy playing with the Clementoni MIND Designer robot. They didn’t even need to read the instructions themselves as they already figured out what to do with it. They love to program and set their robot on a task, and they both love using MIND to drawing shapes! MIND is a small and portable robot that is portable for you to take out with you. This robot makes a wonderful Christmas or birthday present with educational benefits for younger children! This is available to buy from good toy retailers, online and Amazon.
Do check out our Clementoni RoboMaker Pro review for older children.
Disclosure: We received the sample for the purposes of writing this review, however, all thoughts and opinions remain our own. We have included Amazon affiliate link to the product. If you click on this and buy, we may earn a small commission.