Design of Tangible Procedural Programming of Robots Based on Augmented Reality

Abstract

This paper presents a tool for children aged 5 to 11 to learn procedural programming through tiling tangible cards. In our tool, children are expected to tile square cards that respectively correspond to the unique operations of a robot while looking at them through a display, where the cards on the display are augmented by intuitive colorful images. Once each image is augmented, the image stays on the display even if the corresponding card is taken away. Also, the control flow from a card to another card is represented by a line image, which is created when one places a card close to another card. In our tool, editing operations such as undo, erase, and setting arguments can be also performed through movements of a special card. For feasibility study, we have had one hundred students of primary schools use our tool. As a result, they learned programming more quickly than programming in an existing tool where programs are composed through tiling icons.