Visual Programming Language for Thymio II Robot

This paper introduces a visual programming language (vpl) for Thymio II, an educational robot. Our vpl is intended for children in primary school and aims at making robotics programming approachable for young children by creating a close correspondence between the icons of the programming language and the design of the robot. Its two modes of operation — basic and advanced — allow children to learn programming at a level suitable for their current skill. Moreover, our vpl provides a live generation of textual code that eases the transition to textual programming for more advanced children. This paper describes the goals and the guiding principles behind the design of our vpl and demonstrates how an iterative development process with evaluations with children resulted in an improved vpl.