There are a lot of hobby and educational robots that have a similar form factor: a low, wide body with either wheels or tracks for locomotion. When [Alexander Kirilov] wanted to teach a summer robot camp, he looked at several different commercial offerings and found all of them somewhat lacking. His wish list was a neat-looking compact robot that was easy to extend, had various sensors, and would work with Python. Finding nothing to his liking, he set out to make his own, and Yozh robot was born.

The robot certainly looks neat. There is a color TFT display, seven reflective sensors pointing down, two laser time-of-flight sensors facing forward, an IMU, and some LEDs. There are plenty of expansion ports, too. You can check out the code that runs it, too.

The camp was about a year ago, and you can see some footage from it in the video below. However, the documentation and files are only recently available, should you want to build your own Yozh.

Looks like a fun project with or without students. [Alexander] estimates the cost to build at around $150. If you want a smaller wheeled robot, we’ve seen them. If you make a Yozh, maybe you can teach it to play.