Sony's KOOV

Inspired by Lego's robotic games and BBC's micro bit, Sony brings a new robot building educational kit for school going children with an aim to grow their interest in learning programming. Sony's KOOV will enable the children to give life to their imagination.

Sony Global Education, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sony Corporation, has developed the digital toy as part of its aim to promote STEM education.

The educational kit follows a new approach to develop the sense of coding among the students. The kit comes with seven translucent blocks, microcontroller, sensors, LEDs and other essential accessories which required to make a toy, such as a car, an airplane, a robot etc. These accessories can be assembled into any form and can be programmed to act as a robot as per its master's wish.

KOOV, which is expected to hit the market next February, will encourage children to write "Code" during play time.

The electronic giant named the toy KOOV, where 'O' represents 0 of binary code and "K" and "V" stand for "key" and "value", two important terms of a computer. The letters "OO" also represent the infinity symbol, which means infinite combinations of blocks.

KOOV has developed this toy in partnership with another Japanese toy maker Artec Co. Arctec has already a market in Japan for making educational materials for schools. As part of the agreement between Sony Corporation and Arctec, the two companies would continue to develop robotics and programming education.