Senor Parrot's Perch

The Nexi Robot

(Norwood House Press, 2010)

By Toney Allman

The Nexi Robot (Great Idea) by Toney Allman will fascinate you from beginning to end. It relates the quest of MIT robotics professor Cynthia Breazeal to build a social robot, one that learns like a person does and that interacts with people in a social way. Much different than tool and task oriented robots that dominate the robotics field, social robots are designed to learn from people and interact with people, understanding and showing emotions.

Video introduction to Nexi:

Author Toney Allman does a great job of making these complicated ideas understandable and stimulating. Sometimes the author struggles to keep the writing simple all the way through. At times the level is appropriate for a skilled 2nd grade reader, but overall we’re looking at a book aimed at 3rd and 4th graders and up. The format follows a younger reader level, but don’t let kids be put off. They’ll be rewarded with an excellent story about scientific inquiry that is sure to spur their imaginations and help shape their career and educational choices. I recommend this book for any school or public library or for a kid interested in robotics or engineering.

Here is a “Robots to the Rescue”, a short video kids might enjoy staring Nexi and another flying robot. At the end, you’ll see that Nexi looks like it could use a good dose of Visine as it blinks away the smokey sting from its eyes.

Jackson Fish Market has created an application called A Story Before Bed that lets you read a story to your own kids online. The product has many very cool applications and ideas. Click on this link for a demo.

They have the cooperation of several major children’s book publishers who have licensed digital versions of some of their books. To personalize, i.e. read the book to your kid yourself, all you need is a webcam and a browser, and for $6.99 your on your way to reading and sharing books with your kids or grandkids. Special deals are available for parents in the military. Go to their website to get an idea of how it works.

I tweeted earlier about StoryChimes, an app for the iPhone. This would be perfect for the iPhone, as well.

Here’s a great idea. Justin James, a dad with some cool ways to keep kids occupied, developed his iPhone app, called StoryChimes, to provide stories for kids on their parents iPhones and iPods.

“I want to occupy [my daughter's] time whether we’re at the supermarket or something like that. I can give this to her and she can kind of play with it and listen to a story,” says James. “I just think it’s a little more educational than maybe some sort of game or something she might be playing with.”

James’ simply illustrated stories are narrated by professional actors. He currently has eleven titles available and Story Chimes has children’s songs available, also.

Here’s a video link:

CNET reports an interesting adaption of an advanced video gaming device for use in a military robot. The device manufacturer, Novint Technologies, is a company that makes 3-D touch controllers for video and computer games. These controllers give the gamer a definite sense of touch of the objects in the screen. The military application is to provide robot operators a better sense of how strong the grip of the robot has on objects that it is grasping.

People have all sorts of receptors in our body, both in our skin and our muscular system, that provide us feedback on how strongly we are grasping an object. The adapted video gaming device is being designed to provide that same feedback to operators of military robots. Picking up explosives with out detonating them is an immediate application.

Here is an older demo of a similar device, the Novint Falcon. You can easily see the possibilities in this device and how it might be used to send signals from robotic sensors to the human operator’s fingertips.

Courtesy of NASA

In some crowds science has a bad reputation. These people folks find it dull, or poorly written. It’s a reputation not at all deserved, yet sometimes the writing of science books can leave a bit to be desired. That’s why it’s great news when we learn about the best of the best science books available. So when I saw that The School Library Journal had posted the list of finalists for the American Association for the Advancement of Science Best Science Books for Children and Young Adults, I was excited.

There are three categories: Children’s Science Picture Books, Middle Grades Science Books, and Young Adult Science Books. Today I’ll highlight the nominees for the Children’s Science Picture Books.

Children’s Science Picture Books

Living Sunlight: How Plants Bring the Earth to Life

(Blue Sky Press, 2009)

By Molly Bang and Penny Chisholm

Illustrated by Molly Bang

This might have been called “My first book of Photosynthesis”, Living Sunlight: How Plants Bring the Earth to Life, Molly Bang and Penny Chisholm explain how plants transform sunlight into energy and life giving food for everything on the planet. The illustrations are colorful and support the simple text. It’s almost magic when an author can explain such a complex web of interaction within a children’s picture book.

Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11

(Atheneum, 2009)

By Brian Floca

Author and illustrator Brian Floca lets us ride along with the Apollo 11 crew as they journey from earth to the moon and back. The illustrations in Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 have a fantastic sense of scale to them. The story is exiting and full of interesting details that bring this historic and inspiring journey to life.

Redwoods

(Roaring Brook, 2009)

By Jason Chin

Redwoods by Jason Chin is a bit reminiscent of Flotsam, a visual fantasy by David Weiner, as it follows a boy who finds a book about the giant redwood trees just before riding the train. As he reads the simple text of the book, the dinosaurs and other things appear in the train window behind him showing what was happening in the world during the lifespan of the spectacular trees. In one of the illustrations a young girl is seen. Later, when the boy puts down the book we see that girl finding the book and beginning to read it herself.

What Bluebirds Do

(Boyds Mills, 2009)

By Pamela F. Kirby

What Bluebirds Do by Pamela F. Kirby highlights a year in the life of bluebirds in beautiful photos. It’s simple text should be readable by many early readers. Following a pair of bluebirds who have nested in her backyard, Kirby captures their daily life, including their raising of five young bluebird chicks. School Library Journal compared this book to The Red-Eyed Tree Frog by Nic Bishop.