WIGL: A Dancing Robot That Teaches Children to Play Instruments

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Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Kemea Smith, GoLocalPDX Contributor

Meet WIGL, the new dancing robot that teaches children how to correctly play musical instruments.  

“In all honesty, I wish that I could re-invent the Furby and make it better,” said Vivek Mano inventor of the dancing robot, WIGL. 

Squint-eyed, white dome shaped robot, WIGL, is intended to motivate children to practice their musical skills. The tiny robot hears music notes from any instrument (singing too), and lights up or dances if the notes are played correctly. “I wanted to create a robot that not only responded to musical inputs, but rewarded children for practicing and learning notes,” said Mano. 

Mano studied electrical engineering  at the University of Florida, and created his first robot, a tennis-ball retrieving robot in 2005. After getting his degree, Mano went into sales, marketing, and business development within the big robots industry. 

Now Mano is trying to bring WIGL to classrooms and homes, with a Indiegogo campaign. So far Mano has raised over $6,000 with the goal of raising $10,000 by December 7th. 

Mano came up with the musical education robot, while learning how to play the ukulele.  While playing the ukulele, Mano reflected on how frustrated he was in the third grade while learning how to play the recorder. “Notes didn’t sound right, my timing wasn’t great. Since I wasn’t that great, I practiced in a room by myself, not getting very much feedback,” said Mano. 

Mano immediately began drawing up sketches, learning from local entrepreneurs, connecting with local startup accelerators, and had the first WIGL prototype ready by July 2013.

WIGL was tested at Portland private school Renaissance School of Arts and Sciences. “The children, ranging in age from 6 to 11, were all fascinated and asked plenty of useful questions.” 

Soon after, Mano won the Oregon Technology Business Center's, Electronic Systems Pitch competition, and the Robohub International Robot Launch competition’s "Crowd Pleaser" and Leanest Startup" awards. 

With WIGL, Mano hopes to get children involved in engineering through creative problem solving: “People seem to believe that strong math skills are the most important prerequisite for being an engineer. However, I think that creative problem solving is far more important, and is really the foundation of Engineering. With Wigl, we can develop this skill and get kids excited about Engineering!”

To learn more about WIGL and support the WIGL Indiegogo campaign, click here. 

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