A Sphero is a small, app‑controlled educational robot, best known in its original form as a tennis‑ball‑sized robotic ball you drive and program with a phone or tablet.

What a Sphero actually is

  • It began as a spherical robot you control via Bluetooth from a smartphone or tablet, rolling around like a motorized hamster ball.
  • Inside are motors, LEDs, sensors (like a gyroscope and accelerometer), a processor, and a battery, all sealed in a tough plastic shell.
  • Today “Sphero” is also the name of the company, which makes several programmable robots (BOLT, Mini, SPRK+, RVR, indi) and related learning kits.

What you can do with a Sphero

In practice, people use Sphero robots for both play and learning:

  • Drive it around, change its color, and play mini‑games or obstacle‑course challenges through mobile apps.
  • Learn coding by creating programs (block‑based or JavaScript) that control its movement, lights, and behaviors.
  • Use it in class projects: mazes, science experiments, interactive stories, quizzes, timelines, even “Sphero painting” where the robot drives through paint to make art.

A simple example: a student might code Sphero to navigate a taped maze on the floor, adjusting speed and angles step‑by‑step until it reaches the “goal,” learning both geometry and basic programming logic along the way.

Why it’s a big deal in 2020s classrooms

  • Sphero has become a prominent brand in K–12 STEM and STEAM education, used by tens of thousands of educators and schools worldwide to teach robotics and computer science.
  • The company positions its robots as tools to build creativity, problem‑solving, and critical‑thinking skills, not just toys.
  • Newer models like RVR are more open and modular, letting advanced users attach boards like Arduino or Raspberry Pi for deeper hardware and coding projects.

Quick recap

  • Sphero (the product): a small, programmable robot (originally a rolling ball) you control and code with a smart device.
  • Sphero (the company): an edtech robotics firm focused on STEM/STEAM learning tools and curriculum for K–12 schools.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.