LEGO Mindstorms is a really good line imo. Maybe higher level on the software side, but is great for what you're describing- getting beginners interested in coding through robotics.
I would also highly recommend looking into local FIRST Lego League [0] teams, which are part of the FIRST robotics competition series yet targeted for younger kids. I got into FLL in late elementary school, though the age range accepts kids from pre-K through middle school [1].
FLL uses LEGO Mindstorms robots, while later FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC)and FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) use metal/plastic parts. In FRC we used milling machines and CAD, big steps up from playing with LEGOs.
The FIRST programs are amazingly educational and fun engineering/programming experiences. I cannot recommend them enough. Going through FLL and FRC was life changing for me, getting me into programming and building teamworking and countless other skills.
I got started on LEGO Mindstorms in high school (circa 2005).
At the time the fun thing to do was to have them navigate a maze. First an incredibly small and simple one; one that could be done by manually programming LEFT-RIGHT-FORWARD-etc. Then a more complicated one with walls (using the bump sensor) to show the left-hand algorithm, then one where the "walls" were tape on the ground (using the optical sensor).
All in all it shows that yes, you can program to do a specific task OR with some abstraction and algorithms you can solve every instance of a problem. All while teaching the basics of if-else-then, loops, etc.
That was easily some of the best bang-for-their-buck my parents ever got. LEGO Mindstorms would keep me quiet and out of trouble for days at a time.
I'm not certain how much that influenced my interest in software engineering though, or even if it made learning traditional programming easier. I later had a few c++ courses in high school, and as I recall most of my struggles were with syntax errors (not discounting those in the slightest because I made a _ton_ of them) and whatnot rather than some kind of broken control flow, and I remember that not being the case for all but two of my classmates, so it does seem plausible that some of the Mindstorm lessons stuck around or shaped how I think about such things.
Comments
LEGO Mindstorms is a really good line imo. Maybe higher level on the software side, but is great for what you're describing- getting beginners interested in coding through robotics.
I would also highly recommend looking into local FIRST Lego League [0] teams, which are part of the FIRST robotics competition series yet targeted for younger kids. I got into FLL in late elementary school, though the age range accepts kids from pre-K through middle school [1].
FLL uses LEGO Mindstorms robots, while later FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC)and FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) use metal/plastic parts. In FRC we used milling machines and CAD, big steps up from playing with LEGOs.
The FIRST programs are amazingly educational and fun engineering/programming experiences. I cannot recommend them enough. Going through FLL and FRC was life changing for me, getting me into programming and building teamworking and countless other skills.
[0]: https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/fll
[1]: https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/fll/what-is-first-leg...
I got started on LEGO Mindstorms in high school (circa 2005).
At the time the fun thing to do was to have them navigate a maze. First an incredibly small and simple one; one that could be done by manually programming LEFT-RIGHT-FORWARD-etc. Then a more complicated one with walls (using the bump sensor) to show the left-hand algorithm, then one where the "walls" were tape on the ground (using the optical sensor).
All in all it shows that yes, you can program to do a specific task OR with some abstraction and algorithms you can solve every instance of a problem. All while teaching the basics of if-else-then, loops, etc.
That was easily some of the best bang-for-their-buck my parents ever got. LEGO Mindstorms would keep me quiet and out of trouble for days at a time.
I'm not certain how much that influenced my interest in software engineering though, or even if it made learning traditional programming easier. I later had a few c++ courses in high school, and as I recall most of my struggles were with syntax errors (not discounting those in the slightest because I made a _ton_ of them) and whatnot rather than some kind of broken control flow, and I remember that not being the case for all but two of my classmates, so it does seem plausible that some of the Mindstorm lessons stuck around or shaped how I think about such things.
Back on the original yellow brick you could hack it and write something like C++ for it IIRC. Not sure about the current generation.
NXC you could use c++ or Java with a little work. Probably the same or easier with the newest generation
The EV3 actually supports MicroPython: https://education.lego.com/en-us/support/mindstorms-ev3/pyth...
It had NQC (Not Quite C) available for it.
For smaller kids, Lego Boost is quite nice, too.