Description

Although Solarbotics is primarily a cool-device, kit-company, we do get some requests for robots that people just want to use. And the Thymio II is about the most-ready-to-use robot out of a box we’ve seen! Additionally, it has a very strong open-source aspect making it easy to hack. We are very pleased to be their Canadian distributor for this very well engineered robot platform.

The Mobsya Thymio (“Tee-myoo”) II is a project designed with EPFL (the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne), and is now produced and sold by the Swiss non-profit organization, Mobsya. EPFL is the same organization that produced the first really serious research robots called the Khepera. I remember aching to get one of these super-cool, small robots in the late 1990’s after seeing some really interesting machine learning experiments done with them. In short, the people behind the Thymio have an excellent pedigree in robot design! They spent a huge amount of effort exploring what makes a robot fun and educational, and distilled that into the Thymio II. And it’s been used in some pretty interesting research (traffic simulations!)

Check out these features, and review some of the impressive abilities that the Thymio has to offer.

Thymio Robot Features:

This is what the robot offers in its hardware.

• Mechanics:
  • 2 DC motors
  • 39 LEDs
  • 1 speaker
  • 1500mAh 3.7V Lipoly battery (3~5 hour charge lifetime)
  • USB recharging circuitry
  • “Construction Brick” compatible attachement points
  • Pencil mount for line-drawing
  • Comes complete with micro-USB cable
  • 11×11.2×5.3cm (4.3 x 4.4 x 2.1″)
  • 270g (9.5oz)
• Electronics & Sensors:
  • PIC24FJ128-based
  • Wireless IEEE 802.15.4, 2.4GHz
  • SD-card slot
  • 9 IR proximity sensors (~10cm range)
  • 5 input buttons (capacitive sensors, like on your cell phone)
  • 3-axis MMA7660 accelerometer
  • 1 thermomenter
  • 1 microphone
  • 1 IR receiver

Thymio Wireless Features:

• Basic behaviors – obstacle avoidance, line following, hand-chasing (and more) are all standard out-of-the-box.
• Methods of programming include both symbolic and text-based methods:
  • Thymio Visual Programming Language (Very basic; Ages 6+)
  • Google’s Blockly interlocking event-driven visual programming language (Ages 9+)
  • MIT’s Scratch sequence-driven visual programming language (8+)
  • Aseba Studio text-base IDE (Ages 12+)
• Visual feedback (using Visual) on what stage is code is running live
• Monitor all program variables while running live
• Real-time variable and event plotting (curves and graphics make it easy to analyse!)
• Remote-programming means no wires to hook up to change your code
• Robot-to-robot communication between Thymios using their IR sensors and/or wireless radio links
• Default program modesinclude:
  • FRIENDLY Mode (Green) – Follows your hand, or other object
  • EXPLORER Mode (Yellow) – Explore, without crashing
  • FEARFUL Mode (Red) – Detects shocks and bumps, and changes in gravity direction
  • INVESTIGATOR Mode (Cyan) – Line following
  • OBEDIENT Mode (Purple) – Listens to button command or remote control input
  • ATTENTIVE Mode (Blue) – Responds to clapping sounds (1 = Go straight / turn; 2 = run / stop; 3 = Spin in circle)