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Build Your Own Robot at the Upper East Side's New Brooklyn Robot Foundry

By Shaye Weaver | July 14, 2016 5:05pm
 The Brooklyn Robot Foundry teaches children and adults how to use engineering skills to build robots.
Brooklyn Robot Foundry Opens Upper East Side Location
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UPPER EAST SIDE — A robot is anything a kid can dream up, with a little help.

Brooklyn Robot Foundry opened a workshop at 1595 Second Ave. on June 2, offering all-day and after-school classes that teach kids how to use cardboard, LED lights, magnets, motors and circuits to build robots that glow, spin, sail or flip coins.

"New York City kids don't have garages [to work in]," said founder Jenny Young. "I wanted to make a place where kids can come together to take things apart and put them together again. Nowadays, kids are working on computers and iPads, but they're maybe playing on them more than creating."

The Foundry offers several programs, from week-long classes, summer and after-school sessions, a girl's club, family-focused days, birthdays, and occasionally adult classes.

► READ: Girls' Robot-Building Club Starting in Gowanus

In a typical full-day program for kids, which runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., instructors hand out booklet manuals and guide them through certain engineering terms like "linkage," "circuit" and "LED" before they start to work on two robots, which could be anything from a solar-powered boat robot to a rolling cardboard cube robot, Young said.

Then the students use computer software that easily allows them to program their robots to do what they want, like blinking on and off.

Once a student has an understanding of all the types of robot components, he or she can start building their own.

"It's a fun and freeing process," Young said. "Sometimes we don't know if their robots will work but 70 percent of the time we are wrong. We feel we have succeeded in life if kids are coming up with things we didn't think were possible."

Adults can build their own too. The studio will occasionally host special nights or corporate events, which will be posted on the Foundry's website and often involves beer and team building projects, Young said.

Participants are welcome to pit their robots against each other, Young said, but noted that it won't be like the TV Show "Robot Wars" where metallic machines spit out sparks and knives.

Young, 37, grew up in Cleveland working with her father in the family garage and with her mom on crafts — memories that cultivated an appreciation for working with her hands, she said.

She worked as a design engineer before starting up the first Brooklyn Robot Foundry in Gowanus five years ago. Since then she's opened outposts in Tribeca, and now on the Upper East Side.

"I see things in a slightly different light because I think 'How does that work?' or for the thing that just broke, 'I'm going to fix it, change it or modify it,'" she said.

"Robots are fun and people say I have the sweetest job ever," Young continued. "The cool thing about my business is that kids learn an incredible amount of stuff about engineering and don’t know they're learning. It's not like school. There are no Scantrons and they don't have to fill out bubbles."

A schedule of prices and times can be found on the Brooklyn Robot Foundry's website.