Exploring a Handwriting Programming Language for Educational Robots

Abstract: Recently, introducing computer science and educational robots in compulsory education has received increasing attention. However, the use of screens in classrooms is often met with resistance, especially in primary school. To address this issue, this study presents the development of a handwriting-based programming language for educational robots. Aiming to align better with existing classroom practices, it allows students to program a robot by drawing symbols with ordinary pens and paper. Regular smartphones are leveraged to process the hand-drawn instructions using computer vision and machine learning algorithms, and send the commands to the robot for execution. To align with the local computer science curriculum, an appropriate playground and scaffolded learning tasks were designed. The system was evaluated in a preliminary test with eight teachers, developers and educational researchers. While the participants pointed out that some technical aspects could be improved, they also acknowledged the potential of the approach to make computer science education in primary school more accessible.