An open source graphical robot programming environment in introductory programming curriculum for undergraduates

A graphical programming tool is developed in a view to help beginners realize the importance of coding in the form of physical robotic movement. Introducing a programming language to students with no background is often felt to be challenging in terms of syntax and control flow of a language. The paper discusses an open source graphical programming tool built on Minibloq platform that allows students to focus more on creative part of programming. The paper proposes a graphical approach to programming where a student need not remember any constructs of a programming language, but relies on the approach to solve a problem. The programming utility is developed for an open source Arduino platform. Currently the tool is developed to control a real robot built around Arduino platform. Thus a platform to learn fundamentals of programming as well as robotics is made available to students. The graphical programming tool with the robotic hardware was found to be easy to learn by high school students during an outreach program conducted by the authors. The framework is also extendable beyond programming and can be further developed to understand robotics.