Rise of the Bot Builders

Two tech workshops at the Club are helping to inspire the engineers and programmers of tomorrow.

Japan has long enjoyed a reputation as a robot powerhouse. It’s a leading maker of both humanoid robots like Honda’s Asimo, as well as industrial robots.

In 2015, though, the science-fiction dream of owning a C-3PO-style robot butler got a little closer with the launch of Pepper, a communications robot produced by mobile carrier SoftBank. Priced at around ¥200,000, plus monthly fees, it’s aimed at households and businesses, and batches of 1,000 Peppers have been selling out every month, according to SoftBank Robotics.

Robots are often predicted to become the automobile or personal computer of the 21st century. While they remain a novelty in everyday life (even with the early success of Pepper), Nomura Research Institute estimates that 49 percent of all job types in the country could become computerized or robotized in the next 10 to 20 years. The evolution of artificial intelligence, whether in robot form or not, seems unstoppable.

In response to the information technology revolution, education is changing. Recent emphasis on the academic disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has led to a rethinking in how to draw students to the fields as early as possible. And with crowdfunding platforms like Indiegogo and Kickstarter, it’s now easier than ever for aspiring engineers and inventors to take their ideas to a wider audience.

Some young people are already immersing themselves in tech. In November, 10 Club youngsters enrolled in a four-week course to learn the basics of building electronic circuits and robots. The budding engineers’ creations were varied, from a remote-controlled, video call-enabled explorer to a sound-activated robot car.

“I really wanted to take the class because it is a chance to learn something new and fun. I also read in a book that robots will be smarter than humans in the future,” says Australian Sara Dickson, 10, who joined the class with her 7-year-old brother, Nathan. “My mom told me that it will help me build robots in the future and will help me get a job.”

Emi Runnacles, 7, says she was inspired to take the class because her grandfather is an electrician “and can make really cool things.”

The robotics workshop was taught by Neil Nguyen, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley’s mechanical engineering program, who built robot control systems at Arcus Technology in Livermore, California. Nguyen is a tutor at Tokyo Academics, a group of educators with prestigious overseas credentials.

“I want to inspire kids to be makers and show them that designing gadgets and robots is not at all difficult,” says Nguyen, who grew up in Silicon Valley. “Of course, everyone will not be great at first, but most people are not great at riding bicycles during their first 10 trials, but the process keeps getting easier.”

From this month, Nguyen leads another robotics workshop and will help Duc Doba, a software engineer at a large messaging app firm, teach a class focused on building apps for iOS, the operating system for Apple devices like the iPhone. Students will learn basic programming in Apple’s Swift programming language, using Xcode to write and debug Swift programs, and how to create a mobile app from scratch and then release it for public downloading.

One student who plans to enroll is Member Sebastian Beck, 13, who began programming robots in seventh grade through a Tokyo Academics-run course. That spurred his interest to learn about advanced programming techniques.

“Now that I know basic programming, I can pursue it to see if it’s something I wish to do to more in-depth,” he says. “I also think programming helps my math skills because you have to be logical and sometimes also have to do calculations, for example, how much you want an object to move right or left or up and down.

“We live in a world where information is easily accessible and where more and more is run by computers. All of that is based on programs, and I want to understand how they are made and learn how to make some myself.”

Build a Bot
Jan 24–Mar 20 (eight Sundays)
4:30–6:30pm
Jean Pearce Classroom

iOS Programming
Feb 14–Mar 20 (eight Sundays)
4:30–6:30pm
The Studio

Words: Tim Hornyak
Photo: Yuuki Ide