Bob Brutor

There’s just something about robots and kids.

At the Barrie Public Library’s Holly branch Saturday, about a dozen kids built tracks for robotic cars and manoeuvred robotic bumblebees at Robots, Robots, Robots.

“The kids love them. It gives them an opportunity to be creative and learn new things. They’re learning how to build things. They’re learning more critical thinking. (The robotics are) also really colourful, so it draws their attention,” said Julianna Ray, community engagement assistant at the Essa Road library branch.

“They’re interesting to kids. It allows them to be creative and it’s also really important for them to learn so they can figure out where their passion is.”

The kids, mostly age five and younger, started by assembling Magna-Tiles into circular tracks and then sent robotic cars around and around, up and down.

“It’s just simple robotics for the kids to learn the early concept of coding or building, and in this case, they are building tracks,” Ray said. “The power source is all in the cars.”

The tracks have little holes in the middle that allow the cars to go through, and the cars have little points underneath to sink into the tracks to stay on the track.

“Over on the other side, we have our coding robots of the bumblebees, which they give instruction to go through the challenges we created,” she said.

“They have to give the robots specific codes to be able to go through the track to get to the end, to get a prize.”

Robots are available at all Barrie Public Library branches.

“We also have different robots … that, when they react to different-coloured tiles, they do different things, like change speed or direction,” said Ray.

“The kids really like those.”

As kids will with robots.