'Marty is an inspiration to many' - Edinburgh tech company grows after 'dancing robot' proves to be a success in schools

Marty can dance, sing, turn around and play football. Marty is a robot.

The expressive machine is the brainchild of Dr Sandy Enoch, founder of Leith-based tech business Robotical and who began working on the robot four years ago.

Marty’s purpose is to bring learning coding to life for school pupils. The humanoid robot, moving and grooving to coding languages Scratch and Python, is currently being used in 42 educational establishments in the Capital including schools and universities.

With the first model being a hit after it was released in 2017, Sandy expanded his team at the beginning of this year after releasing a more robust second version of Marty.

Founder of Robotical Dr Sandy Enoch with two of his Martys picture: Robotical

If singing and side-stepping wasn’t enough, the charismatic robot can now be connected to Bluetooth, controlled from an app, has a speaker and can be coded in a screen-free way making Marty appropriate for younger children - primary 1s and 2s. Previously Marty was just for youngsters aged eight and above.

"Marty is such an inspiration to many,” said Sandy.

"The motivation behind the robot is to make STEM subjects more exciting and approachable for youngsters.

"It’s so rewarding seeing children who weren’t interested in topics like coding spend time with Marty and discover a newfound interest.

One of Robotical's Martys posing for the camera picture: Robotical

"Now with version two out and a bigger team at Robotical, Marty is more robust and will hopefully reach more kids.”

The first bunch of the start-up’s new Martys, which cost £300 each, have already sold out but a second batch will be ready by February 2021.

Robotical has ambitious plans to quadruple its annual sales this year as 7,000 Martys have now been sold with resellers across Europe, Africa, Asia and North and South America.

In the UK, the robot can be found in more than 200 schools.

Sandy set up Robotical in 2016 after completing a PhD in Robotics at Edinburgh University, his thesis being on walking robots.

In conceiving Marty, Sandy’s objective was to create a characterful, human-like robot that his seven-year-old niece could use to make learning the basics of coding more fun.

Version one of Marty was made from scratch before Sandy secured start-up funding via a crowdfund on Indiegogo to put the first 1,000 Marty into production.

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