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This Discovery Kit is for you to discover and take your first steps with Thymio: learn about its basic behaviours, functions and sensors. You will also learn how to program Thymio with the Visual Programming Language (VPL).
The Discovery kit contains an A1-sized poster and and explanatory sheet. On the sheet you will find 6 games to play with the poster, and also advanced challenges to begin programming Thymio.
It is only available for sale in the museum "La Maison d'Ailleurs" in Yverdon, Switzerland.
You can also download the sheets and print them by yourself at home. Be careful, the quality of the black ink of most printers is not sufficient to use the poster at the maximum of its capabilities. For an optimal result, it is advisable to buy a poster on which the black ink is deposited by a serigraphic process.
Using the 5 proximity sensors on its front side, Thymio detects and in a friendly manner follows everything in front of it. You can try guiding it with your hand. With this behaviour, Thymio is afraid of cliffs… try to bring it to the edge of a table, it will stop following you as soon as it detects the edge! You can also try putting an object in front of your robot, Thymio will turn to be aligned with the object.
Brave explorer, Thymio will explore its environment while avoiding obstacles. With this behaviour, it will also stop when it detects the edge of a table. If you bought the kit, Thymio detects the black lines as cliffs and should also stop over them!
Fearful (red)
Obedient (purple)
Thymio is afraid of everything! When it detects something in front of it, it will move back. If there is something behind it will go forward to try to escape!
Thymio detects shocks and brutal accelerations. It can also detect free falls, try throwing it in the air, but be careful to catch it!
Obedient, Thymio follows the instructions given to it, according to which arrow buttons are touched. Be careful, as in this mode Thymio does whatever you tell it, it can fall down if it comes to an edge!
Attentive (blue)
Investigator (cyan)
In the attentive mode, Thymio reacts when you clap your hands:
1 clap = turns or goes straight forward
2 claps = stop/go
3 claps = turns in a circle
You have to be quick when you clap your hands if you want to be sure Thymio understands what you want it to do.
In investigator mode, Thymio follows a broad black track on the ground.
If Thymio seems not to be able to follow the line, you can calibrate it, that is, show it when it is over black or white in order to adjust the colour it sees to its measurements.
Calibration
Place the robot's ground sensors above the track then simultaneously touch the front and back arrows to calibrate the black level.
Put the robot's ground sensors over the white paper then simultaneously touch the left and right arrows to calibrate the white level.
Games with the Robots
Discovery
1. Stuck!
Goal: make Thymio scream
Select the red behaviour on Thymio and put it down on the yellow robot! Place one hand behind and the other in front of Thymio and see its reaction!
When Thymio detects something with any of its 5 front and 2 rear sensors, it is afraid and makes a lot of noise!
It's not working? Try putting your hands further away and then slowly moving them closer to the robot.
2. I see a track!
Goal: follow the widest black line
One of the six basic behaviours allows to do this task, can you find which one it is?
The Investigator mode makes Thymio follow the track! Put your robot close to the track while in Investigator (cyan) mode, it will turn until it finds the track and will then follow it.
Thymio seems unable to follow the track? Look in the behaviour description to find how to calibrate it, then try again!
3. Thymio has a race in the fastest time**
With the green behaviour, guide Thymio with your fingers. In the yellow one, Thymio will avoid your hands and finally in the red behaviour, it will flee… Try them all!
Time yourself and get the best time! In the lab, we finished the race in the green behaviour in 10 seconds
In the Explorer (yellow) mode, Thymio wanders around, avoiding obstacles. If you bought your poster, Thymio will also stop over the tracks.
Curious?
You did everything and want to go further? Install Aseba on your computer and launch "VPL for Thymio". You can find an introduction to VPL programming and a complete tutorial on this page. You just have to combine an event block on the left and one or more action blocks on the right! Grab your mouse!
1. Stuck!
Goal: make Thymio scream
Program the robot so that it plays music when it sees obstacles ahead and behind it.
Small hint: you will need at least 2 blocks!
Each square represents a sensor. They change colour when you click on them: when they're red, it means they detect something close. When they're all red, it means the robot is surrounded by the Yeti and is scared!
2. I see a track!
Goal: follow the widest black line
Try to program the robot so that when it sees black with its ground sensors it goes forward and when it sees white, it turns.
Small hint: you will need at least 6 blocks!
The squares represent Thymio's proximity sensors.
A white square means that Thymio doesn't see anything close to the corresponding sensor. In fact, the black track tricks Thymio into thinking that 'black' is 'nothing'.
The red square means Thymio sees something close to the sensor, here it detects the poster.
When Thymio sees white on its left, it turns right to get back on the track. Similarly, when it sees the poster on the right, it will turn left. If Thymio sees black ('nothing') underneath it with its 2 ground sensors, it means the robot is on the track and goes straight forward.
3. Thymio has a race
Goal: go down the racetrack in the fastest time
Program Thymio so that it avoids the borders. Stick black tape squares on the racetrack and make Thymio accelerate when it rolls over it.
Try to stay on the racetrack!
Unlike the previous exercise, Thymio will now avoid black lines instead of following them.
When Thymio sees the track on the right (white square), the robot will turn left to get back to the slope. If Thymio sees the shore on its left, it will turn to the right.
4. Beware of the tires!
Goal: avoid obstacles
Program the robot so that when it sees an obstacle, it changes direction.
Be careful not to let it fall off the table.
Small hint: you will need at least 10 blocks!
If Thymio sees something on its left it turns right to avoid it.
When Thymio sees something in front of it it goes backwards.
If it sees something on its right, the robot turns left.
If there's nothing in the way, Thymio goes straight forward.
If there's nothing underneath or a black line, Thymio will stop.
5. On your mark, get set, go!
Goal: make Thymio talk
For this activity, you will need a microSD card. You will also need to download and install Audacity on your computer to record yourself. The goal here is to give Thymio your voice!
Follow this procedure (for now just in French) to record your voice with Audacity. Then save your sound(s) on the microSD card by naming them p0.wav, p1.wav, p2.wav, etc.
Finally, copy this program called "vmcode.abo" on the microSD card, where you copied the sound(s). Don't change its name. Don't create folders on the microSD card, save everything at the bottom level.
Insert the microSD card in Thymio while it is turned off and turn it on. You will see a new colourless mode in addition to the six basic coloured behaviours. Choose this new one by pressing the central button. Now, press on the arrows and the round button and listen to it!
It also works with the Thymio remote controller by pressing number from 0 to 9!
It's also possible to make Thymio play music! Open them with Audacity and save them in the same format as your voice.
By downloading this zip file, you will find some funny sounds to save on the microSD card. A longer list is on this page.
6. Robotown!
Goal: light effects with Thymio
It’s dark in Robotown… Program Thymio so that it follows the line with one sensor and lights up when it sees the houses with its other sensor.
Turn off the light, Thymio can see in the dark.
Small hint: you will need at least 8 blocks!
Blocks 0 and 1 are for following the track with one ground sensor, the right one: when this sensor detects the white poster, Thymio turns to the right, and when it sees the black track it turns to the left.
The other ground sensor (on the left) is used for detecting the houses ('black' huts as 'nothing', so with a white square) and lights up in green as soon as it detects a house and in blue as soon as it detects the white poster.
Try changing the lights with different colours by moving the sliders.
You can see that while programming Thymio with the VPL (with the 'ThymioVPL' program), the code is being simultaneously written at the side.
Most of the time, one 'paragraph' of text code corresponds to an event/action couple of blocks. If you click on one of them, the corresponding paragraph is highlighted.
You can also see that if you change some parameters on the action blocks (motor speed, LED colours, etc.), the code is instantaneously modified.
Try to understand some snippets of code, and maybe even change some values!
