   | Markerbot is a low-cost robot designed to get young kids programming. The robot features an IR reader which allows kids to program the robot to do whatever they want by simply coloring in the appropriate arrows on a paper strip. A bit of what's going on behind the scenes: Four IR sensors are positioned along the circumference of the reader and pick up their respective column of tick marks on the strip of paper. The fourth column on the strip is pre-printed with a set of tick marks to indicate when the other sensors should check to see if tick marks are in their own column. The code running on the Arduino splits the strip into 3x3 chunks and extracts the various movement commands to be executed once the "Go!" button is pushed. Future work: Since the project demo we've implemented a few small tweaks including vastly improved reliability of the IR sensors and adding loop functionality to allow programs to move the robot for more than a few seconds. Next steps involve integrating sensors and while structures into the control strip in a seamless and intuitive way. Here it is in action: Prototype to Product Cost Breakdown:
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