When Steven Stotts was a kid, Christmas often meant receiving the gift of something mechanical – like a remote-controlled car or an electric model train. It also meant taking those things apart to see how they worked and putting them back together again.
And it wasn’t just dissecting his toys that held his interest. He loved to build, too. He remembers with fondness a car he carved out of a block of wood and raced against other wooden cars, part of a program at his church. “I still have one of my trophies,” he says, “for the best design.”
Now 40 and living in West Oak Lane, Stotts – also known by the moniker “Stevie the Inventor” – still tinkers. Only now he manages to patent his gadgets – recently, for example, a mobile photo booth.
All that childhood creativity has led over the years to another creation, small car-like contraptions called Nanobots, which he packages in what he calls DIY Invention Kits, designed to introduce kids and families to STEM – short for science, technology, engineering and math. He is bringing both his passion and opportunities for kids and families to build Nanobots to the Chestnut Hill Library Tuesday, Feb. 18.
Stotts didn’t go to Drexel, MIT, or any of the big engineering schools. In fact, he’s in marketing. But he remains an inveterate and motivating maker of things – a fascination he loves to share.
“I just want to inspire young people to use their imagination,” he says. “The beautiful thing about modern technology is that we are able to do so much, but I think we forgot the passion of just being innovators – creating things – and I think this (building Nanobots) is a great opportunity to introduce making things to kids to get their minds moving again.”
Nanobots, he explains, are “robot cars a little different from Transformers in that they don’t transform into anything. They come in different styles. One is powered by a pulley with a rubber band. Another one is powered by gears. I’m working on a wireless version and then, hopefully, sometime in the future I’ll be working on Bluetooth and WI-FI capabilities as well.”
For now, the low-tech versions include all kinds of components, including gears, wires, parts molded from plastic that have tiny holes allowing the builder to cut, bend, slice and design into any style.
Stotts designs and creates the Nanobots kits, and packages them in his living room. He refers to it as his “factory.” A variety of kits, each with accessible functionality, will be offered at the Chestnut Hill Library classes.
He compares his workshops to Painting with a Twist. “We’re designing something that I actually have in my hand, and we’re going piece by piece and encouraging kids to follow instructions all along and be able to build and take home their own kits.”
There will also be a race of some of the Nanobot creations, with prizes.
A chance encounter proved to be his entree to the Free Library of Philadelphia system.
“I was selling my games (yes, he invents those, too) outside a Fresh Grocer in the Wyncote section of Philadelphia, and a guy named Gaspar Santos came up to me and said, you should be teaching this stuff in the library,” he recalls. Santos is a community initiative specialist for the library system. “I said, I didn’t know that they had that kind of thing on offer. So he got me in touch with someone at the library and I put in an application.”
He’s now been leading programs in Philadelphia libraries for a year and a half.
For Stotts, these workshops are just one more invention in a lifetime of inventions, and a continuation of the creative streak he developed decades ago.
“The stuff I’m doing now is the stuff I used to do in my room on sunny days if I didn’t want to go outside and play,” he says. “The great thing now is that I’m able to package a great product and put it in a position that kids can actually enjoy it and have the same experience I had, but at a larger scale.”
There are two programs on Feb. 18: one, just for kids, from 3 to 4:30 p.m., and another, for families, from 5 to 6:30 p.m.
Nanobot DIY Kits usually retail for $14 or $15 on his website,, but for these workshops there is no charge. However, registration is required as class size is limited.
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