HOW ROBOTS THINK

Meet Bolt the Robot! 🤖

You see robots every day in Singapore — cleaning robots at hawker centres, delivery robots on footpaths, even robot vacuum cleaners at home!

But here is a secret: robots do not think like you do. 🧠

Robots cannot dream, feel bored, or imagine things. They follow a special way of "thinking" — and by the end of this lesson, you will know exactly how it works!

Every robot does 3 things 🔍

Robots work in a loop: Sense → Think → Act. Tap the glowing circles on Bolt to discover each part!

👀 Sense 🧠 Think 🦾 Act

Tap a circle! 👆

Found 0 of 3 parts.

Bolt has three special parts. Can you find them all?

Robots follow recipes 📝

A robot's "thoughts" are really a list of step-by-step instructions. Computer scientists call this an algorithm — like a recipe the robot must follow exactly, in order.

🍞 Help Bolt make kaya toast! Tap the steps in the correct order, from first to last.

Bolt's instruction list:

💡 If the steps are in the wrong order, the robot gets stuck — imagine spreading kaya before getting the bread!

Be the programmer! 🕹️

Robots do exactly what their program says — nothing more, nothing less. Write a program with arrow steps to move Bolt 🤖 to his battery 🔋. Don't crash into the walls!

Tap arrows to add steps:

How do robots choose? 🤔

Robots can't really "decide" like you. Instead, programmers give them IF–THEN rules: IF something happens, THEN do this.

🧹 beep! wall ahead!

Bolt's vacuum-bot senses a wall in front. Which rule should the programmer give it?

IF wall_ahead == true → THEN turn( ) ✅

Some robots learn from examples 📚

Modern robots can also learn patterns from many examples — this is called machine learning. But watch out: they only know what their examples teach them!

🍈 Bolt is learning to spot durians. We showed him these examples:

🍈
spiky
DURIAN ✅
🍎
smooth
not durian ❌
🍉
smooth
not durian ❌

Bolt learned the pattern: "spiky = durian!" Now he sees a rambutan — small, red and… spiky!

🔴
spiky!
❓❓❓

What do you predict Bolt will say?

😅 Bolt shouts "DURIAN!" — he is wrong! His rule "spiky = durian" was too simple.

Lesson: learning robots need lots of good examples, or they make funny mistakes. That's why humans — like you! — must teach them carefully.

You cracked the robot code! 🎉

🎊 🤖 🎊

Robots don't think like humans — they follow instructions, rules and patterns.

And the people who write those instructions? Programmers — maybe that will be you one day! 🚀