Bandai Co.
Masashi Harada, New Business Office

Materials that are expected to be modified by the user

Many of you may have played with Bandai toys as a child. Mr. Harada, who was on a mission to think of new values not bound by existing products within the company, came up with the idea of a new business in the robotics x programming area in response to the trend that programming will be made compulsory in elementary schools in 2020. The motif was naturally decided upon, as the Gundam series was the most popular robot.
The worldview of the original story was behind the choice of the Zaku, the mass-produced machine of the enemy side, rather than the Gundam of the series title, as the educational material. One reason is that the Zaku was the first mobile suit mass-produced by mankind in the story, and it was a perfect fit for the goal of mass production as an educational material product for the new project. Another reason is that the Zaku series has dozens of variations, including improved versions. We hope that users will not only learn by assembling the Zaku series as educational materials, but also expand their own imagination and make modifications to the series," he says. The company also plans to hold a mechanics contest based on videos submitted by users.

We want you to be excited to learn.

What is important to us is the idea that learning comes beyond play. The Gundam contents that we have had so far have been mainly about the pilots and the government officials. In contrast, this educational material can be enjoyed from an engineer's point of view. While assembling the head, torso, arms, and other parts one by one, users can learn how servo motors and sensors work and how to use them. After completing the entire model, the children can program the blocks using a smartphone application, and as a further development, they can use additional parts and PC applications to develop their own original models of the aircraft itself and its movements.
The completed Zaku is approximately 30 cm in length, and the servo motors that drive its joints can be wrapped in the palm of one's hand, but if one imagines the size of the real thing, which is approximately 18 m in height, the joints alone would be taller than a person. Mr. Harada hopes that students will be excited to learn about the machine, imagining how to make such large parts and how thousands of them would be assembled and operated.

Expand your imagination and have a purpose!

Whether it is robotics or programming, it is important to have a purpose in order to have the desire to learn on one's own. We want students to imagine the goal of creating such a robot and go through a trial-and-error process to realize it," says Mr. Harada. He believes that the motif of Zaku, with its background story, will be effective in expanding this imagination.
In the future, they are also envisioning a Zaktank version with a tank-like lower body, in which programming learning takes center stage. Mr. Harada said, "We want people of all ages to enjoy learning while having fun. We will continue to develop educational materials that are also entertaining," he said enthusiastically.