FlexForge Basic
Bolts onto a Pilot or Axle robot.
- In the photo: motor plates, gears, brackets, beams and screws.
Add-on kits for grades 3 to 8
FlexForge
FlexForge is an add-on kit for the Pilot Robot Kit and the Axle Robot Kit. Students bolt extra pieces, motors and gears onto the robot they built. It adds 15 days of engineering challenges. Two kits: Basic at $149, Enhanced at $349.
Same robot, same software
Why educators choose FlexForge
Students keep the robot they built and the software they know. FlexForge adds new problems to solve, like a delivery claw and a snowplow.
The FlexForge curriculum
What the curriculum covers
Sixteen lessons of 45 to 60 minutes: an introduction, then five units. Each unit is one engineering challenge on the robot students already built.
How every unit works
- The full engineering design process: In every unit students explore a real-world mission, build a robot for it, then test and improve it.
- Real engineering habits: Each mission starts by defining the problem, the criteria for success and the constraints, before anyone builds.
- An Engineering Journal: Students sketch, label and reflect in one journal across every unit, so they can see their own thinking grow.
- A capstone and a showcase: The last unit combines everything students built before, and ends with teams presenting their robot.
The five units on the Pilot Robot Kit
Grades 3 to 5. Each unit adds a new mechanism.
- Soccer Bot: Students design a robot that moves a ball into a goal without tipping over.
- Pickup Bot: Students design a mechanism that pinches, lifts and releases small objects into a bin.
- Plow Bot: Students design a blade that raises, lowers and angles to clear a path.
- Climber Bot: Students design a spinning arm that helps the robot mount and cross obstacles.
- Capstone robot: Teams pick a real-world theme, agriculture, space exploration or factory automation, and combine what they built before into one custom robot, then present it in a showcase.
The five units on the Axle Robot Kit
Grades 6 to 8. Each mission has a budget.
- Wildfire Response Bot: Students program Axle to follow a line and deliver water to a fire zone.
- Food Delivery Bot: Students build a secure cargo platform and use the ultrasonic sensor to decide when to wait and when to cross a street.
- Prosthetic Arm: Students build a powered arm and gripper that bends, rotates, grips and releases an object.
- Ski Bot: Students trade wheels for skis so Axle can cross snow and climb a small ramp.
- Rescue Bot: Teams search the snow with the light sensor, secure a person and bring them back to base, then present the robot in a showcase.
Two flexible kit options
Both kits fit the Pilot Robot Kit and the Axle Robot Kit and pair with the same FlexForge curriculum.
Works with
FlexForge Enhanced
The larger of the two kits.
- In the photo: more plates and gears than Basic, plus axles.
Curriculum licensing and professional development are priced separately and bundled into Classroom Packages at a discount. Prices subject to change. Request a quote for your school.
Where FlexForge fits in the schedule
Used as an extension, FlexForge adds about 15 days to the Pilot or Axle unit. We then work with your school to fit it all together as one unit.
After the base unit, or woven into it
FlexForge does not have to come last. When a school has fewer days than the full unit, we write a custom scope. It alternates base lessons with FlexForge challenges. Here is one.
A 20-day example
Our Director of Education wrote this scope for an eighth-grade engineering course. The school had about 20 instructional days and used the Axle Robot Kit with FlexForge. The priority was the engineering design process:
- A couple of days on the base robot: building it and learning the basic programming.
- One engineering design challenge.
- Learning to program one of the sensors.
- Another engineering design challenge.
Lessons, software and training
Where the FlexForge lessons live
The lessons sit in the Curriculum Portal, in the FlexForge Pilot Curriculum and FlexForge Axle Curriculum folders. Students code in True Robotics Playground. Teacher training is held virtually.
Questions about FlexForge
What are the FlexForge add-on kits?
Pilot and Axle are our base robots, with a 25-day unit and a 45-day unit. FlexForge is a recent addition: pieces students build onto those base robots to work through the engineering design process. A kit has lots of gray build pieces, plus extra motors and gears, and it comes with a 15-day curriculum extension built around five engineering challenges. In one, students design a claw that grabs an object and carries it across the classroom. In another, they design a snowplow for the front of the robot. Students prototype, test and iterate. The pieces work well on both Pilot and Axle, and the FlexForge curriculum slide lists 5 units of 3 lessons at 45 to 60 minutes each.
Does FlexForge have to come after the regular Pilot or Axle curriculum?
No. It can be woven in. Our Director of Education recently wrote a custom scope for a school that uses Axle with FlexForge and has only about 20 instructional days. Students spend a couple of days on the base robot, building it and learning basic programming. Then they do one engineering design challenge, learn to program one of the sensors, and move on to another engineering design challenge. That course was eighth grade engineering, so the priority was the engineering design process. We work with each school to fit the pieces to what it wants from the course.
Can we run an after-school robotics club?
Yes. Once the robots are built, an engineering or science class can use them in the morning for the base curriculum, and in the afternoon the most interested students can use the FlexForge pieces to go deeper into the engineering design process. The General curriculum also suits clubs where students from different grades work together, because it removes any required prior knowledge. Clubs combine well with staggered units: a grade finishes its classroom unit, then joins the club later in the year.
Built to work with what you already have
FlexForge is designed for the Pilot Robot Kit and the Axle Robot Kit your students already build. Same robots, same software, same Curriculum Portal your teachers already open.
