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Visual Programming Language for Thymio II Robot
Open accessAbstract
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.
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The VPL platform represents parts of the robot's language by graphical icons that can be directly interpreted by human problem solvers, particularly facilitating transitions from FORM to PROG phases.
“The VPL platform (Fig. 5) represents parts of the robot's language by graphical icons that can be directly interpreted by human problem solvers, particularly facilitating transitions from FORM to PROG phases.”
From Fostering computational thinking through educational robotics: a model for creative computational problem solving (2020) · cites this paper as Shin, Siegwart, & Magnenat, 2014
The Introduction and §4.1 Design (pages not provided) describe graphical programming elements that closely correspond to the robot’s design, sensors, and actuators. Section 4.2 Evaluation reports that children could relate visual changes to textual code, supporting a transition toward textual programming. The paper does not identify FORM and PROG phases or show that VPL specifically facilitates a transition between them. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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Research works printed but not linked: 7
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Chevalier, M., Giang, C., Piatti, A., & Mondada, F. (2020) · International Journal of STEM Education · doi:10.1186/s40594-020-00238-z · Cited by 223
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Karim, M. E., Lemaignan, S., & Mondada, F. (2015) · 2015 IEEE International Workshop on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts (ARSO) · doi:10.1109/arso.2015.7428217 · Cited by 145
“Our experiences with the Thymio in schools [61], [88], [89] have helped us to realize that the student-robot interactivity and subsequent learning experiences can be further enhanced through the integration of a robot state or af-”
BackgroundBen-Ari, M., & Mondada, F. (2018) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-62533-1_1 · Cited by 105
“The design of the Visual Programming Language (VPL) is presented in [5].”
MethodCoronado, E., Mastrogiovanni, F., Indurkhya, B., & Venture, G. (2020) · Journal of Computer Languages · doi:10.1016/j.cola.2020.100970 · Cited by 87
“Nowadays, new STEM-targeted educational VPEs coupled with robot toys appear every year, notable examples being the interfaces for such robots as Cozmo [58] and Thymio [59] .”
BackgroundEl‐Hamamsy, L., Chessel-Lazzarotto, F., Bruno, B., Roy, D., Cahlikova, T., Chevalier, M., Parriaux, G., Pellet, J., Lanarés, J., Zufferey, J. D., et al. (2020) · Education and Information Technologies · doi:10.1007/s10639-020-10355-5 · Cited by 79
“…activities, both tangible (Bers et al. 2014; Elkin et al. 2018; Mussati et al. 2019) and visual (Resnick et al. 2009; Portelance et al. 2016; Shin et al. 2014) are simplified, developmentally appropriate, and playful environments that help reduce the cognitive load compared to traditional…”
Education in the AI era: a long-term classroom technology based on intelligent robotics
Bellas, F., Naya-Varela, M., Mallo, A., & Paz-López, A. (2024) · Humanities and Social Sciences Communications · doi:10.1057/s41599-024-03953-y · Cited by 43
“Over time new functionalities have been added to the robot, such as a Block Based Programming Language (BBPL) to control the robot (Shin et al. 2014), wireless communication to operate the robot in real time (Rétornaz et al. 2013) and a tangible programming language for the youngest students…”
Exploring Escape Games as a Teaching Tool in Educational Robotics
Giang, C., Chevalier, M., Negrini, L., Peleg, R., Bonnet, E., Piatti, A., & Mondada, F. (2018) · Advances in intelligent systems and computing · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-18141-3_8 · Cited by 33
Design and evaluation of an end-user friendly tool for robot programming
Buchina, N., Kamel, S., & Barakova, E. (2016) · IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication · doi:10.1109/roman.2016.7745109 · Cited by 29
“Following the positive example of Thymio II and LEGO Mindstorms languages, we employed the pictures of parts of the robot that are relevant to the task in order to make the language more approachable for the users [18].”
BackgroundMethodSituated Live Programming for Human-Robot Collaboration
Senft, E., Hagenow, M., Radwin, R., Zinn, M., Gleicher, M., & Mutlu, B. (2021) · ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology · doi:10.1145/3472749.3474773 · Cited by 26
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Dragule, S., Berger, T., Menghi, C., & Pelliccione, P. (2021) · Journal of Software and Systems Modeling · doi:10.1007/s10270-020-00854-x · Cited by 20
“VPL-based (Visual programming language) [102], Blocklybased, Scratch-based, and text based for programming an educational, wheeled robot called Thymio.”
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Lapeyre, M. (2015) · theses.fr (ABES) · doi:10.70675/e040e055zfa15z42d3zbd44zbbb4faaa05a8 · Cited by 14
“Also, there are successful educational projects such as Arduino (Banzi, 2009) and Thymio (Siegwart et al., 2014) propose such plug ’n play IDE (see Fig.”
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“Finally, in the last part of the experimental session, both classes switched set-ups, i.e. class A now worked with Thymio VPL and class B with Thymio PaPL.”
MethodInfluentialTeaching Computer Science Concepts Through Robotics to Elementary School Children
Yesharim, M. F., & Ben-Ari, M. (2018) · International Journal of Computer Science Education in Schools · doi:10.21585/ijcses.v2i3.30 · Cited by 14
“The robot is programmed using the Visual Programming Language (VPL) environment (Figure 2) (Shin et al., 2014).”
MethodHsu, T.-C., & Hwang, G.-J. (2021) · Universal Access in the Information Society · doi:10.1007/s10209-021-00821-3 · Cited by 13
“Many countries have perceived learning computational thinking as an important educational objective, and have encouraged young students to learn that literacy [23–25].”
BackgroundA Tangible Programming Language for the Educational Robot Thymio
Mussati, A., Giang, C., Piatti, A., & Mondada, F. (2019) · International Conference on Information, Intelligence, Systems and Applications · doi:10.1109/iisa.2019.8900743 · Cited by 13
“To date, the most frequently used programming language for the Thymio robot is the graphical interface VPL [11].”
MethodA Creative Game Design and Programming App
Chatain, J., Bitter, O., Fayolle, V., Sumner, R., & Magnenat, S. (2019) · Motion in Games · doi:10.1145/3359566.3360056 · Cited by 12
“We designed a Visual Programming Language ( ��� ) inspired by the one used in the Thymio robot [Shin et al. 2014].”
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Buchina, N., Sterkenburg, P., Lourens, T., & Barakova, E. (2019) · IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication · doi:10.1109/ro-man46459.2019.8956248 · Cited by 9
“Some of these languages define the robot behaviour in terms of actions that should be executed when certain events happen [3],[7],[35],[42].”
BackgroundAlario-Hoyos, C., Rodríguez-Triana, M., Scheffel, M., Arnedillo-Sánchez, I., & Dennerlein, S. M. (2020) · Lecture Notes in Computer Science · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-57717-9 · Cited by 8
Adorni, G., & Piatti, A. (2025) · International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1016/j.ijcci.2025.100760 · Cited by 16
“They typically include programming assignments, coding challenges, and gamified exercises that allow students to apply AT concepts in real-world scenarios [137, 160, 174].”
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Shahmoradi, S., Kothiyal, A., Olsen, J. K., Bruno, B., & Dillenbourg, P. (2020) · Lecture notes in computer science · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-57717-9_7 · Cited by 6
Augmented Robotics for Learners: A Case Study on Optics
Johal, W., Robu, O., Dame, A., Magnenat, S., & Mondada, F. (2019) · IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication · doi:10.1109/ro-man46459.2019.8956363 · Cited by 5
“2) A graphic environment entitled VPL [5], allowing programming for beginners, even children with reading disabilities.”
BackgroundSelf-citationLearning local behavioral sequences to better infer non-local properties in real multi-robot systems
Choi, T., Kang, S., & Pavlic, T. P. (2020) · Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation/Proceedings · doi:10.1109/icra40945.2020.9196728 · Cited by 4
“To demonstrate the effectiveness of our method, we employ a commercially available, two-wheeled physical robotics platform, Thymio [6], which allows to execute a team of small two-wheeled mobile robots.”
MethodThe Effect of the Programming Interfaces of Robots in Teaching Computer Languages
Bagci, B., Kamasak, M., & Ince, G. (2017) · Robotics in Education · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-62875-2_8 · Cited by 4
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“The Thymio debugging test contained 2 items with VPL programs in the Thymio environment [55].”
Brown, S., Chu, S. L., & Yin, P. (2021) · International Conference on Interaction Design and Children · doi:10.1145/3459990.3460727 · Cited by 2
“For example, the event blocks in the Thymio VPL interface intentionally mimic the design of the Thymio robot, providing a direct, visual mapping between the computation and the electronics that it impacts [43, 49] (Figure 2).”
MethodFourteen Years of Software Engineering at ETH Zurich
Meyer, B. (2017) · arXiv.org · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1712.05078 · Cited by 2
Improving the thymio visual programming language experience through augmented reality
Magnenat, S., & Mondada, F. (2014) · doi:10.3929/ethz-a-010274447 · Cited by 1
“Recent progress in visual programming language (vpl) design [2] has shown that children can understand elements of a core computer science concept — event handling — even in the course of a 1.”
BackgroundSelf-citationEngaging Children in Educational Robotics Through Escape Games
Chinzer, E., Vellinger, A., Hubermont, A., Vitanza, A., Gigliotta, O., & Tuci, E. (2025) · 2025 IEEE International Conference on Metrology for eXtended Reality, Artificial Intelligence and Neural Engineering (MetroXRAINE) · doi:10.1109/metroxraine66377.2025.11340235
“Users create event-action pairs by associating event blocks (e.g., ‘button pressed’, ‘obstacle detected’) with action blocks (e.g., ‘turn on LED’, ‘move forward’), allowing even beginners to create meaningful robotic behaviors [23].”
Metadata
- Authors
- Shin, J., Siegwart, R., & Magnenat, S.
- Affiliations
- ETH Zurich (CH)
- Venue
- ETH Zurich
- Publisher
- ETH Zurich
- Published
- 2014
- OpenAlex
- W2541892138
- Cited by
- 26
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2025: 4 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 2 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 1.27
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- other-oa
- Locations
- Repository for Publications and Research Data (ETH Zurich) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- ETH Zürich Research Collection
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Science Applications › Teaching and Learning Programming
- Social Sciences › Education › Educational Robotics and Engineering
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Software › Spreadsheets and End-User Computing
- Keywords
- visual programming languages, educational robots, programming for children, elementary school, iterative development
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