The Shield-Bot is a variation of the original Boe-Bot^® robot with its BASIC Stamp^® 2 brain, shown below. It was introduced by Parallax Inc. in 1999 and enjoyed instant popularity with schools as for their robotics, electronics, programming and physics programs.  Today, the Boe-Bot Robot Kit and its accompanying text continues to be in demand for STEM courses, because PBASIC is a very easy language for a first-time text-based programming experience. 

The Arduino microcontroller arrived on the scene in 2005 and its popularity grew through the DIY (do-it-yourself) hobby community.  Parallax teamed up with SimplyTronics to design the Board of Education^® Shield, which makes the Arduino hardware compatible with the Boe-Bot chassis.  The Arduino can do the same tasks as the BASIC Stamp, though in a slightly different way, but it was still straightforward to rewrite the original Robotics with the Boe-Bot to support the Shield-Bot.  This gives the Arduino hobby community the opportunity to wrap a robotics shield around an Uno. It also gives teachers a different programming language option for working with Parallax robots.