Post

Thymyo the open source robot: How to start programming a robot

Thymio the robot was born in Switzerland a few years ago. It has been created to teach how to program, make robotics and education more accessible for kids and adults from 4 to 99 years old in a funny way.

Thymio is a opensource openhardware two wheeled robot. The hardware has been developed under an open license which the schematic can be found online.

It hasa mutlidirectionnal button on the top allowing to turn it on or off and choose different modes with colors for the robot. The robot can follow a line, follow your hand, react to a clap and more. All this allowing the children to play, discover and then start programming.

The robot got different electronic sensors allowing it to evolves more easily in an unknow environnement. We can find:

a speaker
a microphone
infrared sensor all around the robot
proximity sensor
A 3 axis accelerometer
And more

To program the robot, you need to download Aseba. It's a set of software and tools allowing to program Thymio in different ways:

With preprogrammed pictures for the children (Including action and reaction on each side).
Blocky for a visual programming with blocks. It's a derivated from Scratch. A very popular software for programming among the children.
And a more advanced programming with text like C, python or Java.

Differents activites can be made for them like: creating stories, the robot drawer, make clothes for the robot, etc.

The only limit is your imagination. A Wireless Thymio has been created and baptised ''Thymio 2". You can control it with the wifi from you computer and even make the robot communicate with each other. The future will tell us more about that nice adventure.

If you already like Thymio the robot and want to know more about it, click on the following link to get more details: Thymio the robot

You can subscribe to our online newsletter in the lower part of our website and to our social medias (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram and Youtube).