Created by Edinburgh-based Robotical, learning assistant Marty the Robot has won the Hardware/Robotics category at the 2022 BETT Awards.

Able to dance and play football, Marty is a small walking robot designed to introduce coding and robotics to young learners and their teachers.

Marty and Robotical beat out seven other finalists, with a team of 28 judges tasked with selecting the winners from all twenty-four categories among hundreds of entries.

Dr Sandy Enoch, founder and CEO of Robotical, said: “Seven years ago I came up with a rough prototype for Marty. During my PhD I saw just how engaging walking robots could be as tools for teaching coding and STEM subjects and I wanted to make a real walking robot that could be used in schools.

In the years that have passed, we’ve been working a lot on Marty, adding loads of new features and functionality, releasing V2 and putting a lot of time into developing and testing complementary teaching resources across all primary year groups, and beyond.

“These enable Marty to be used as a STEM learning tool, but also integrated within other areas of the curriculum.  All our lesson plans are fully linked to success criteria and align to regional and national curricula both here in the UK and in many other countries.

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“We have worked so hard to make Marty a stand-out STEM tool that is versatile enough to be used by complete beginners to advanced programmers, enabling educators all the while to equip themselves with the skills and knowledge to better understand and teach coding and robotics in a fun and engaging way.”

Julia Garvey, Deputy Director General, British Educational Suppliers Association and Chair of Judges for the Bett Awards added: “We are delighted to be able to recognise the hard work of so many businesses in the EdTech space all of whom have gone above and beyond to support teachers and learners during these uncertain times.”

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