Simple Robot project for children

[somenerd]

Right after my finals, I will be flying to the Philippines for an engineering service trip in Manila (think building houses, helping out the locals etc). We will be interacting with a lot of children, and the group leader wishes to build some kind of robot for the kids to play with.
Any basic kit suggestions? Something that doesn't require too much programming would be a plus, although a programming requirement wouldn't be a big problem. There will be some children available to translate, but I doubt most of the kids we will interact with will know english, so something relatively intuitive would be a plus.

[Peck]

(speaking only from personal observations from presentations my team has made) Something that launches balls is always a favorite with the kids. Kids also enjoy (short term) being lifted in the air by a robot. some kids enjoy things like tag with a robot (if u want simple, here u go).

It might help if u tell us what kind of terrain ur dealing with as ur zone of operation. (if u have no clue, i would stay away from wheels if i were u)

[Cynette]

I think you are looking for one big (but not too big) thing you can take with you, but at Championships I picked up two small things that you might want to consider because they would be things you could actually give the kids to build and take with them.

One was based on the 4-H Junk Drawer Robotics Program and was a sandwich bag of parts that are often lying around peoples houses. Put together it will build a "clipmobile." http://www.4-h.org/uploadedFiles/Res..._challenge.pdf (page 20)

The other was given out by a team and was a bag that builds a moving toy with a toothbrush head as one of the parts. It's called a bristlebot. The team sells them as a fundraiser, but I looked on-line and there are directions to build them in several locations. I wish I could tell you which team it was, they even won an award at Championships and the award presentation mentioned the bristlebots.

[rsisk]

This looks like a fun project - Making a maglev "train" with legos and magnets

http://www.kjmagnetics.com/blog.asp?p=maglev-train

[popnbrown]

I discovered this year. There's a bunch of LEGO kits that involve no programming but have motors and things that move. I think it's called Simple Machines (but I'm not sure). It's basically like a higher-tech regular LEGO kit. So instructions are in the same style (big pictures), and after building you can PLAY WITH IT like a regular Lego kit.

[somenerd]

Thanks for the input. We will be working in a variety of places,but I think we will have a simple flat concrete floor to work with at the very least.