Home > Company Information > In The News and Press Releases > Aug 2007 - DiscoverThis.com is among the first to offer Revell's innovative new VEXplorer Robotics Kit

The Oregon online retailer adds this state-of-the-art robot design product as part of its mission to bring science education to life

PORTLAND, OR August 29, 2007 -- As a leading online retailer of high-quality science kits, Clackamas-based DiscoverThis.com is among the first to offer the highly anticipated VEXplorer robot design kit. Created by robotics icon Innovation First in collaboration with longtime model-maker Revell, VEXplorer brings the high-level engineering and design concepts of Innovation First's renowned VEX system to the mass market.

"We are thrilled to provide another leading robot kit to our customers. Robotics continues to be an important field of study and this kit will help today's kids become tomorrow's engineers" says DiscoverThis.com's president Marianne Cursetjee.

The VEX system is widely used in schools and universities and is central to the FIRST VEX Challenge, a national high school level competition sponsored annually by the nonprofit science education organization FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). VEX has been endorsed by NASA and other prestigious organizations and won the Best Innovation of Show award at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show. VEXplorer was designed as a simplified version of the VEX system to bring the excitement and education of robotics design to the mass market, with a significantly lower price point than the professional system and a wider range of appeal for beginning and intermediate robot designers.

With over 300 parts and unlimited design potential, VEXplorer will appeal to young robotics enthusiasts at all levels. Designed for children ages 14 and up, the kit includes a semi-assembled model you can build in less than an hour, and the SolidWorks Student Design Kit, which features the same technology used by Innovation First to design VEXplorer, allows you to expand your designs as far as your imagination can stretch. Using the software, which is available free with every purchase, young engineers can manipulate all 300 parts to design their own robots.

"The idea," says Mike Brezette, Vice President of Marketing for Revell, "is to teach kids some simplified CAD engineering by allowing them to manipulate the parts to design a robot on screen, then go build the real things and see if what they designed really works."

VEXplorer includes a number of features sure to capture young engineers' imaginations, from an extendable arm and claw that can grab and carry small items to all terrain tires, but perhaps the most exciting feature is the Spycam. "Everybody loves the camera," says Brezette of the attachment that transmits a live color picture and sound to your television from up to 150 feet away. "It's hard to completely get the feeling for it until you experience it. You get it intellectually, but you don't get it emotionally until you've had the fun of sitting in front of your T.V. and watching as you drive this robot around outside or in another room of the house."

Given the fun, games and what Brezette calls engineered mayhem, he's quick to point out that VEXplorer is first and foremost an educational product. An offshoot of the highly acclaimed VEX system, "(VEXplorer) is a serious venture in having fun with robotics in a simplified way," he says. "This is part of a much bigger program that we're carrying into the consumer market."

Home > Company Information > In The News and Press Releases > Aug 2007 - DiscoverThis.com is among the first to offer Revell's innovative new VEXplorer Robotics Kit