THE WORLD’S CUTEST ROBOT NOW TEACHES YOU TO CODE
Using the scripting language Python, researchers could program Cozmo to do pretty much anything. But Anki design Cozmo for kids, not roboticists. “What we figured out was there was no reason why we couldn’t make the exact same functionality available for our more core audience,” he says. “So not for a Carnegie Mellon researcher, but for an 8 year old.”
That required translating all that code from Python to Scratch, a simple programming language MIT developed developed for use in elementary and middle schools. Today, nearly all of Cozmo’s functionality is tidily wrapped up in graphical blocks of code that users drag and drop onto the app’s interface. That makes easy to make Cozmo do things like roll forward and then turn left. Repeat that block of code four times, and you’ve taught Cozmo to make a square on your kitchen table.
See the full story here: https://www.wired.com/story/anki-cozmo-robot/