Hoping to teach children the basics of coding from as young as three years of age, Primo is on the surface a wooden toy for children, but is in fact a robotics kit that uses a visual block-based language to enable kids to learn how to program.
The play set features a small, motorized cube called Cubetto, which is wirelessly connected to a wooden board with several slots in it. The board acts as the programming interface and children control Cubetto by placing the code - color-coded instruction blocks - into the slots. Once the blocks have been placed, pressing a red button on the side of the board executes the code and sends Cubetto to the programmed destination. The four blocks of the code include forward, turn left, turn right and a function block. The programming board includes a separate section where users can create a ‘saved’ sequence of code they can call at any time - when the function block is placed into the main code, it replays the piece of code stored in the function box. This replicates the way languages such as PHP and JavaScript use functions. This feature can even be hacked to create infinite loops.
Video: http://vimeo.com/82620072
h/t Rich Pollett
The play set features a small, motorized cube called Cubetto, which is wirelessly connected to a wooden board with several slots in it. The board acts as the programming interface and children control Cubetto by placing the code - color-coded instruction blocks - into the slots. Once the blocks have been placed, pressing a red button on the side of the board executes the code and sends Cubetto to the programmed destination. The four blocks of the code include forward, turn left, turn right and a function block. The programming board includes a separate section where users can create a ‘saved’ sequence of code they can call at any time - when the function block is placed into the main code, it replays the piece of code stored in the function box. This replicates the way languages such as PHP and JavaScript use functions. This feature can even be hacked to create infinite loops.
Video: http://vimeo.com/82620072
h/t Rich Pollett
