Graphical programming environments for educational Robots: Open Roberta - yet another one?

In recent years, an increasing number of school children is beginning to learn about robotics in the classroom in order to stir their interest in STEM professions. Teachers rely on simple educational robots and intuitive programming environments and graphical programming environments have become a frequent starting point for young robotics newbies. However, currently available tools do often not sufficiently support teachers and students in the classroom. In this study, we evaluate programming environments for educational robots, our results point to the need of lowering the complexity of tools as well as of incorporating combinations of web and cloud technologies, embedded systems and communication concepts into these environments. The technical part of this work presents Open Roberta - an open source based addition to commercial educational robot environments that addresses these needs.