Thymio
Thymio is a small, mobile robot that can be programmed in two ways and was designed for educational purposes. Programming is easy to learn because the Aseba programming language is structured clearly and logically. Thymio is aimed primarily at children and young people who want to learn programming clearly and quickly.
history
There are two versions of Thymio, Thymio I and Thymio II. Thymio II is a further development of Thymio I, the two robots are not very similar visually. The two thymios were developed by the “MOBOS” group. The group includes the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and the Lausanne School of Art (ECAL). The development of Thymio II was also supported by the NCCR Robotics research program, while Mobysa took on the development and management of production. The programming language for Thymio is called Aseba. It was first developed by the MOBOTS group at EPFL, and later further developed in the Autonomous Systems Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ). In 2008, the developers had good experiences with the Aseba programming language for the first time at a programming workshop for young people. So Aseba was chosen as the programming interface for Thymio II. In 2012 VPL was completed. VPL enables visual programming of Thymio II.
Goal of Thymio
Thymio's goal is to bring robotics to a wide audience of all ages. One of the goals is to convince children and young people about robotics and to inspire them. Thymio can be used in schools to give children the opportunity to experience their programming skills up close by programming a robot. Due to its low price and extensive interfaces, Thymio II is easily accessible to many people. With Aseba or VPL, all sensors of the robot can be clearly accessed. You can, for example, give the robot its own character through extensive programming options.
Thymio's philosophy
Thymio gives its users the opportunity to get to know and learn both text programming and visual programming with fun and joy. All hardware, software and all documentation are open source . This means that it is made available royalty-free. Anyone can develop the project further with open source and publish their contributions to Thymio.
developer
Aseba and VPL
Stéphane Magnenat, Florian Vaussard, Jiwon Shin and Francesco Mondada
Thymio II
Fanny Riedo, Michael Bonani, Philippe Rétornaz, Laurent Soldini, Luc Bergeron and Francesco Mondada
Website and documentation
Moti Ben-Ari, Christophe Barraud, Stéphane Magnenat, Morgane Chevalier, Gordana Gerber, Manon Briod, Maria Beltran