Lending Robots
Call us 1-888-512-7747 Ask for a quote

A lending library for classroom robots

Borrow the robot.
Send it back.

Classroom robots cost thousands to buy and date in a few years. Borrow one for a week, a month, or a term instead. It arrives in a hard case, you teach with it, and a prepaid label sends it home.

Ask for a quote See the catalogue

Every loan ships both ways. Nothing on this page books a robot — a person reads your request and replies within one business day. Rather talk it through? 1-888-512-7747.

A small white robot sitting on a library shelf between rows of books, beside a card pocket fixed to the shelf edge.

Why a library.

Buying a robot is a bet. Borrowing one is a lesson plan.

A robot a school buys has to earn its place for years. A robot a school borrows only has to work for the unit you are teaching.

  • Try it before a district commits

    A platform that works in one classroom may not work in yours. Borrow it for a unit of work and find out before anyone signs a purchase order.

  • Most robots are needed for weeks, not years

    A competition season, a capstone, a two-week unit. A loan matches the way the equipment actually gets used, and frees the budget the rest of the year.

  • Nothing to store, service, or update

    It goes back between loans. Firmware, batteries, worn treads, and the screws that always go missing are our problem, not your storeroom's.

A wooden shipping crate on the left and an open classroom door on the right, joined by a dotted loop of arrows running out and back.

The catalogue.

Shelved by grade band, not by vendor.

Every card carries the age range, the setup time, and the supervision the unit requires. Those are the three things that decide whether a robot fits your room, so they are on the front of the card rather than in a footnote.

Grades K–5

Elementary

Something moves in the first ten minutes. Block coding, no typing required.

A small wheeled robot on a desk surrounded by chunky coding tiles marked with arrows and shapes.

Wheeled robotAges 8+

Makeblock mBot Neo

Coding
Block coding (Scratch-based)
Setup
Under 15 minutes

The most forgiving robot we lend. Good first contact with robotics.

Adult supervision required. Small parts.

Build-and-code kitAges 6+

LEGO SPIKE Essential

Coding
Icon and block coding
Setup
Under 30 minutes

Building is half the lesson. Pairs well with a literacy or story unit.

Adult supervision required. Small parts.

Grades 6–8

Middle

Where blocks turn into real code, and where competition teams usually start.

A part-built beam-and-gear robot with a claw arm on a desk, beside a laptop showing a block-coding program and a tray of sorted parts.

Build-and-code kitAges 10+

LEGO SPIKE Prime

Coding
Blocks, then MicroPython
Setup
About 30 minutes

The clearest on-ramp from block coding to a written language.

Adult supervision required.

Competition platformAges 10+

VEX IQ

Coding
VEXcode blocks and Python
Setup
About 45 minutes

Borrow before you commit a season. Competition-legal parts.

Adult supervision required.

Grades 9–12, dual-enrolment

High school & advanced

Research-grade platforms for capstones — the equipment a school cannot justify buying.

A four-legged robot dog standing beside a full-size humanoid robot, both drawn with annotation lines pointing to their joints.

QuadrupedAges 14+

Unitree Go2

Coding
Python SDK, ROS 2
Setup
About 45 minutes

The one students film. Genuinely fast — treat the floor space seriously.

Continuous adult supervision required. Keep a clear operating area.

HumanoidAges 12+

NAO

Coding
Choregraphe, Python
Setup
About 30 minutes

The most widely used teaching humanoid. Strong for interaction projects.

Adult supervision required.

Full-size humanoidAges 16+

Unitree R1

Coding
Python SDK
Setup
About an hour, two adults to unpack

Our largest unit at 25 kg. Capstone and showcase work only.

Continuous adult supervision required. Not for unsupervised student operation.

How a loan works.

Five steps, and one of them is waiting for finance.

Loans run from one week to about eighteen — roughly a term. Extensions are usually fine if nobody is waiting on the unit.

  1. Tell us what you are teaching

    Grade band, what you want students to do, and roughly when. Use the form or the chat, whichever is faster. You do not need to know which robot you want.

  2. We send a written quote

    Usually within one business day. It names the unit, the loan dates, the shipping both ways, and the damage cap, so there is nothing left to discover later.

  3. Your purchase order clears

    We invoice against a PO on standard net terms. No card, and no teacher paying out of pocket and chasing a reimbursement. This is usually the step that decides your start date, so start it early.

  4. The case arrives

    About a week after the PO clears. Sometimes three days if we are holding stock, though we will not promise that until we have checked.

  5. You pack it up and send it back

    The return label is already in the case. Repack, seal, hand it over, and tell us what broke. Fair wear is never charged for.

What ships with it.

Nobody comes with the robot. This does.

This is equipment lending. No instructor travels with the unit and no one from our side is in the room, so everything you need to run it safely has to be in the case — and it is.

An open hard case with foam cut-outs holding a humanoid robot, a coiled cable, a battery, a printed guide, and a folded cloth.

A hard case, cut to fit

The robot, its charger and spare battery, cables, common spare parts, and a cleaning cloth — each in its own foam cut-out, so you can see at a glance whether anything is missing before you send it back.

An open spiral-bound guide showing step-by-step diagrams, with a small robot standing beside it pointing at the page.

A printed guide, not a QR code

Setup, safe use, what to do if it falls, and how to power it down — on paper, because school wifi fails on exactly the day you need it. Email support runs for the length of the loan.

A hand taping a cardboard box shut, with a shipping label and a red stamp mark on the side and a rubber stamp resting nearby.

The return label, already inside

Prepaid and in the lid. There is nothing to arrange at the end of a loan and no account to set up — which matters when the loan ends the week school does.

Loan terms.

The parts that usually hide in fine print.

These are on this page rather than in an attachment because they are the questions a business office asks first.

An adult supervises every session

No robot we lend is designed to be left alone with students. Supervision requirements are printed on every catalogue card and in the guide that ships with the unit.

Fair wear is expected

Scuffs, worn treads, and lost screws are normal and never charged for. We ask that you tell us what happened so the next school gets a working unit.

Damage is capped

If something serious breaks, your liability is capped at a fixed amount stated on your quote before you commit. No open-ended exposure.

Purchase orders welcome

We invoice against a PO on standard net terms. No card required, and no personal spending by teachers.

We collect no student data

Nothing we ship phones home with student information, and this site only ever asks for staff contact details. Robots are wiped between loans.

Pricing.

We quote. We do not have a price list.

A wheeled robot for a fortnight and a class set of humanoids for a term are not the same transaction, and a published rate would be wrong for both.

What decides your quote

  • Which unit. A wheeled robot and a full-size humanoid are not close in price.
  • How long. Loans run from one week to a full term.
  • How many. Class sets cost less per unit than a single robot.
  • When. Competition season and the start of term are the busy windows.

Tell us those four things and you get a written quote, usually within one business day, with shipping both ways and the damage cap already on it.

Ask for a quote.

Three short screens. Nothing is booked.

This sends your request to a person. It does not reserve a robot or hold a date — someone reads it and replies within one business day.

Prefer to talk? Call 1-888-512-7747 and tell us what you are teaching. Same result: a written quote, one business day.

Who should we reply to?

What do you need, and for how long?

“Not sure yet” is a useful answer. Tell us what you want students to do and we will suggest units.

A rough answer is fine — “after spring break” tells us as much as a date.

Anything that would help us quote it.

A unit of work, a club, a competition season, an open evening. This is the part that most changes what we suggest.