Innovative Voice-Activated Robots for Computational Thinking Education: Design and Development

Abstract

With the advent of the digital age, countries worldwide have begun to emphasize computational thinking education, hoping to cultivate learners' abilities to meet the requirements of future talents. Currently, computational thinking education in young children is mainly based on visual programming on computers or robots. However, using computers requires a prior understanding of abstract thinking, which is difficult for young children to master. To meet the need for cultivating computational thinking in younger children, this study combines a tangible robot with a verbal user interface to develop a set of voice-activated programming robots suitable for younger children. The learner gives verbal commands to make the robot perform the specified actions and complete the problem-solving task. This approach allows children to ignore the syntax of the programming language and thus focus more on problem-solving.