Dec 16, 2020Two technology companies have teamed up with BBC Studios' BBC Learning division to create an Internet of Things (IoT)-based learning kit that provides inventors young and old with a platform for IoT programming. The kit enables users to build wireless sensor-based systems that transmit data via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), guided in voice by the time-traveling genius scientist known as the Doctor, from the television show Doctor Who.
Fablesss semiconductor company SiFive is providing its RISC-V processor, which is used in the Tynker coding system that is intended to be easy enough for children to use, but with functionality that BBC Learning expects to be leveraged by adults as well. The HiFive Inventor Coding Kit is designed to teach users and enable them to code their own IoT solutions. As a learning tool, the kit focuses on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and innovation for future generations, according to Kara Iaconis, the head of BBC Learning.
Jodie Whittaker's version of the Doctor has provided a positive role model for women and girls.
The hand-shaped device includes an Espressif ESP32 Wi-Fi and BLE chip, as well as a suite of onboard sensors including an accelerometer. With the HiFive Inventor Coding Kit, students and young inventors are expected to create solutions based on six quests that are part of the kit's software. These quests are intended to be fun, Iaconis says, though the long-term goal is to train a generation of inventors to eventually help build everything from smart-city application solutions to intelligent factories and enhanced wearable technologies.
BBC Learning's Kara Iaconis
The HiFive device was released on November 23, a significant day for Doctor Who fans. That date is also known as TARDIS Day, the annual celebration of the program's first airing in 1963. The British science-fiction program has a worldwide following, and several generations of viewers have watched the Doctor—in all the character's many incarnations—fight extraterrestrial beings, rescue people in need and save civilizations, unhindered by time or space. The program was discontinued in 1989, returned as a TV movie in 1996, and relaunched in 2005, with numerous successful spinoffs. More than a dozen actors have portrayed the Doctor since William Hartnell introduced the character in 1963. Jodie Whittaker, who joined the cast in 2017, is the first woman in the role, and Jo Martin soon followed her as the first non-white actor to play the time traveler.
BBC Learning partners with education and technology industry companies to create educational products that it then markets. Learning technology is among the company's focuses. "As the world transitions to an increasingly technology-based society," Iaconis explains, "BBC Learning realized the opportunity and importance to help deliver powerful solutions to train-up students of the future." Equally important, she adds, is having a female role model inspire young female innovators. "We wanted to use a powerful, problem-solving female figure who could be a role model for girls, to encourage them into technology and coding."
Tynker provides the coding platform, including coding lessons narrated by Whittaker. Her narration invites students to join her aboard her TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space), a combination spacecraft and time machine capable of changing shape but perpetually stuck in the form of a vintage British police box. Together, they take on challenges such as developing an intergalactic weather service, wirelessly piloting an alien spaceship, controlling a robot or building alien musical instruments.
The kit's IoT device comes with a USB cord for internet connection. The Wi-Fi connectivity also enables inventors to share their quest with the HiFive cloud-based software. Via BLE, users can share data between the kit and BLE-enabled devices, as well as between two kits. Such devices could include mobile phones, for instance.
SiFive's HiFive Inventor Coding Kit
The RISC-V instruction set architecture was invented in 2010, says Chris Lattner, SiFive's product and engineering president, as part of a UC Berkeley project under Turing laureate Dave Patterson. The team included Krste Asanovic, Yunsup Lee and Andrew Waterman. In 2015, the three founded SiFive to develop commercial products based on RISC-V; the company provides a flexible instruction set architecture as the basis of new processor designs.. The following year, they helped found RISC-V International, a non-profit organization, to openly develop and ratify the instruction sets and extensions.
SiFive's Chris Lattner
The industry is changing, Lattner says, from using software running on general-purpose central processing units (CPUs) to utilizing accelerators such as graphics processing units (GPUs) and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to improve performance. "As computing requirements continue to scale beyond what can be delivered by Moore's Law," he says, workload-specific accelerators help to process data efficiently and quickly. With RISC-V, these accelerators are integrated into the central core and use the same instruction set, thereby reducing the need for specialized programming techniques.
The HiFive system leverages that RISC-V 150 MHz processor integrated with Wi-Fi and BLE, as well as a suite of sensors to enable programming and development that is simple enough that a child can accomplish it. The kit also includes an external speaker to help users become comfortable with using accessories with the board, along with a battery pack, a lighted LED USB cable and alligator clips, and it sells at a suggested retail price of $74.95.
BBC Studios and Tynker have been working together on this product since 2019. It kicked off in London in conjunction with a large education conference, using what the companies say is a shared understanding of helping students gain critical programming skills. During the past eight years, Tynker has engaged 60 million children worldwide in coding. Tynker is based in Silicon Valley, and this is the company's first IoT-based solution, though its technology has also been used in hardware such as drones and robotics, says Teri Llach, Tynker's consumer marketing director. Tynker offers coding courses around the world that incorporate immersive story-led content.
Many actors have played the Doctor since 1963, both on television and in cinemas. Top to bottom, left to right: William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, John Hurt, Christopher Eccleston, Matt Smith, Jodie Whittaker, Peter Capaldi, David Tennant, Jo Martin and Peter Cushing.
"The growth of the Internet of Things and the explosion of data that this is creating will require skilled programmers," Lattner states. That trend is creating a demand for kids and young adults to learn about IoT devices and how they can interact with the world, he adds. So far, Iaconis reports, young inventors have used the kit to create IoT watch faces, multiplayer games that can be conducted across the internet, plant sensors to wirelessly track soil conditions, automated robots using visual-recognition patterns, a robot control device and a remote-controlled camera. In the future, BBC Learning plans to roll out community features to enable sharing between HiFive Inventor users.
Tynker's Teri Llach
For example, with the capacity for sharing the quest results of the Doctor Who kit, students designing IoT solutions in Brazil could view the problems and solutions differently than those in New York, South Africa or China. "One of the things we should not underestimate is the creativity and innovation of students," Iaconis says. "We want to bring the power of BBC storytelling and unique characters into the new learning environment, where kids don't view it as learning but as a pathway to empower fun and creativity."
BBC Learning hopes to instill positive character traits in the kit's young users that are exhibited by Whittaker's version of the Doctor, Iaconis says. Doctor Who aired for 26 seasons from the 1960s to the 1980s, and 12 more seasons (and counting) have been added since the series' return in 2005. The 13th season of the modern series is set to kick in 2021, following a special episode airing on Jan. 1 titled "Revolution of the Daleks."
