Our team is creating a Children’s Museum exhibit, aimed at ages three to seven, that allows kids to have a first‐hand encounter with a robot. Here is the current state of our design:

The Robot Painter is a semi-permanent exhibit that will be made accessible to kids at specific times throughout the day under the supervision of a Children's Museum staff member. It is a robot programming experience for one child at a time.

The exhibit consists of a child-sized programming station, a robotic arm, and a washable Plexiglas surface on which the robot arm will paint. Kids use a stylus, color-selection palette (three colors—red, yellow, and blue), and stylus-sensitive screen to "program" the robot arm, receiving limited visual feedback from their color selections and strokes. After they have finished, they hit a button and the robot arm replicates their strokes and color choices on the Plexiglas board using actual paint.

The exhibit is likely to be housed either in the Children's Museum's art studio or garage area. Ideally, staff will be able to move it to different locations within the museum without difficulty. It should be robust, easy to maintain, cheap to run (i.e. use low-cost art materials), and reasonable in size.