In April 2019, my mom’s great friend Gabriela Gallegos came home. She lives in Cambridge and she’s an expert in robotics. Also, she loves spreading the word: she encourages kids and young people to learn programming and robotics. When she came, she brought with her a small kit (a Tiny 4WD Robot Kit) for me to build my first robot ever. With it, an amazing device: a Raspberry Pi to control and program it.

Ever since, I’ve been learning bits and bits of programming. I’ve been digging Python and it was so amazing: like learning to think or to speak another language all over again.

Also, I’ve been touching and retouching the robot, in order to learn how to make it work.

With Gabriela, we have video-conferences in which she helps me to put things together and to understand what I’m doing. Then, my mom helps me to read instructions and posts in websites, and she stays by my side while I experiment a bit with my robot.

And talking about my robot, its name is Kaladin. And in my head, I call it Kaladin-bot. The name Kaladin comes from an amazing epic fantasy series: “The Stormlight Archive”. When I learned 2020 PiWars theme was “Disaster Zone” and helping victims on desaster zones, I immediatly thought about this character. He has a soft spot for helping everybody and saving them if possible. He has awesome abilities and he’s charming and sweet. Since I think the idea behind robotics is to help humankind to live better lives, it seemed fitting to choose Kaladin as my robot’s name.

If you’re into fantasy reading, please go and pick book one of the “Stormlight Archive” by Brandon Sanderson, you won’t regret it. (Here’s a picture of me meeting Brandon Sanderson).

I’m also a big gamer. I have a big brother (he’s fifteen years old) and we have a great relationship. So obviously, we fight all the time. But we also play a lot of games together. We own an Xbox one, and that’s why I chose to use my Xbox One controller with my robot. I’m having a hard time with it, but if I wasn’t, where would the challenge be?

I spoke with my Technology teacher about PiWars and my robot. She immediatly sent me a link to learn Python (in French), that has been incredibly useful. There’s a lot of information in English, but I haven’t read anything in French. It’s easier for my brain. Also, I’m visiting with her my town’s Fablab, where I will personalize my robot and learn more on programming.

My following posts will be more technic, but I’ll keep sharing anecdotes. A story is made with a lot of pieces, much like a robot.