Open Roberta

With Open Roberta Fraunhofer IAIS is looking to encourage children to code by using robots such as Lego Mindstorms, and other programmable hardware systems such as Arduino, BBC Micro-Bit, and the Calliope mini.

The Cloud-approach of the Open Roberta Lab is intended to simplify programming concepts and make it easier for teachers and schools to teach how to code.

As a cloud based programming environment no installation is needed and any operating system (Mac OS, Windows, Linux) and computer hardware device may be used.

[10][11] One of the advantages of Open Roberta Lab is that it can be used with any device (PC, tablet, smartphone); only a web browser is needed.

As of the release 2.2.1, the Linux-based operating system EV3dev is officially supported for the LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 robot.

Open Roberta Lab is available in the following languages: Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish always in school students.

The development team at Fraunhofer works together with teachers and education experts from the Roberta network.

The programming paradigm of NEPO is inspired by Scratch, which was developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

All available blocks are listed and categorized as the Action, Sensors, Control, Logic, Math, Text, Colours, Variables, Functions, and Messages as shown in the table below.

These types can have the following values: Since August 2022, the Open Roberta Lab offers the functionality to program artificial neural networks.

The feature makes AI algorithms intuitively experienceable and understandable through graphical programming.

The networks programmed by the students can be tested directly in the 2D simulation provided in the Open Roberta Lab, so that the children receive immediate feedback.

Open Roberta was awarded the "Bundessieger 2015" at the challenge "Germany Land of Ideas" in the education category.