Internationalof Computational
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Research Article

Practice of Programming Education using Finger Robot
Kaito Omata1, Shinichi Imai2,*
Graduate School of Education, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
Graduate School, Tokyo Gakugei University, 4-1-1 Nukuikita-machi, Koganei, Tokyo 184-8501, Japan

12ARTICLE INFOABSTRACTArticle History

The movement of teaching computer science to children can be seen all over the world, but because it contains abstract content,
it is difficult for children like elementary school students to understand it through lectures alone. The purpose of this study is todevelop teaching materials that stimulate interest in the concept of binary numbers by using robots to teach computer science.
As a result of having children use the developed material, it helped them understand binary numbers.

Received 08 September 2018
Accepted 17 November 2018
Keywords
Programming education
binary numberrobot
CS unplugged© 2020 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.
This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

1. INTRODUCTION
Today is the fourth industrial revolution. In Japan, the national
curriculum was revised in 2017, and the new national curriculum
will be implemented in elementary schools from FY 2020. The newnational curriculum will require programming education at theelementary school level. Turning to the rest of the world, from 2014
England made “Computing” a compulsory subject at the primaryschool level [1]. From a global perspective, it can be seen that theknowledge, skills, qualities and abilities of computers and programming are considered to be necessary in the future.
Toward 2020, lessons using visual programming languages andlessons using robots are being tried as practical programming
education in various parts of Japan [2,3]. It has been reported
that, according to the lessons using robots, robots can attract
children’s interest even if they do not have a high level of interestand understanding of scientific concepts, are good at carryingout thinking try and error, and can work on programming while
having fun.
Most of the robots used in programming lessons are mobile robots.
The mobile robot has the advantage of being able to observe
the behavior of the robot at the time of program execution, andbeing able to understand the control structure and its necessity
step-by-step by case of repetition and collision. However, there
are few teachers who can teach robot programming and it is difficult for children to understand and program sensors and motors.
Development of robot teaching materials that are simple in programming and that operate without a deep understanding of sensors and motors facilitates robot programming that has many
advantages in programming education.
Corresponding author. Email: shimai@u-gakugei.ac.jp*An approach to teaching computer science to elementary school
children is “COMPUTER SCIENCE Unplugged” (Next, CSUnplugged), developed by Bell et al. [4] in New Zealand. CS
Unplugged is a simple way for elementary school students to learn
the basic principles of computers. Examples include binary numbers, image representations, and text compression. In the computerworld, information is represented in binary. In the process of learning programming, learning how a computer works will help you
better understands computers and programming.
Learning materials that teach programming and the basic principles of computers at the same time will be needed in the future. In
this research, we develop a robot teaching material that can simultaneously learn binary numbers and programming.

2. EDUCATIONAL ROBOT TEACHINGMATERIALSThe proposed teaching material is a robot (Next, “Finger Robot”)
which imitates the right hand of a human as shown in Figure 1,and consists of the back of the hand and five fingers. The Finger
Robot uses the robot kit of Artic Co., Ltd (Osaka, Japan). Studuino
is used as a controller to operate the Finger Robot. The softwareuses Studuino Software, a block programming language, so thateven elementary school students can easily handle programming.

2.1. Hardware
Studuino is connected to a Personal Computer (PC) via a USB
cable. A servomotor is used as a finger moving mechanism. An external power supply (dry battery) is used as a power source to move theservomotor. Studuino can be used in two patterns: communication

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263

mode and transfer mode. The communication mode is to use
Studuino and PC connected all the time, and the communication canbe carried out all the time. The transfer mode is to write a program toStuduino’s RAM and it can also be used by Studuino alone. In thisteaching material, it is used in the communication mode in order todisplay the state of the Finger Robot on the screen of PC.
A Finger Robot can be operated by using a servomotor for eachfinger and connecting a terminal to the I/O port of Studuino.
Unlike a normal motor, a servomotor can be positioned according to a specified angle. Studuino Software is able to run the blockshown in Figure 2 simply by specifying an angle. A servomotor of90° is in a state where the fingers are stretched as shown in Figure 1.
The servomotor is bent at 180°.

2.2. Software
When a robot is moved by programming, it is possible to movea finger without using conditional branching or manipulation ofvariables. Since the purpose of this educational material is to arouseinterest in the concept of binary numbers, the program shown in
Figure 3a is prepared in advance as a function so that the child canoperate the servomotor by executing the block shown in Figure 3b.
Although English is used in the figure, it is used by children inJapanese.
Figure 3b is a function for operating the servomotor according to
the state of the finger portion. The condition specified in the argument is a variable representing the state of the finger part, and in
Figure 3a, if the function is called when the finger part representing
position 16 is extended, the finger part is bent, and if it is called
when it is bent, it is stretched. Five functions, one for each finger,
were prepared as shown in Figure 3b.
In the activity in the lesson, the child makes the program whichmoves the finger part using the function, and experiences the conversion between 10 and binary numbers based on the idea of thebit string, while bending and stretching the finger. The programs
prepared by children are a combination of those shown in Figure 3b.
As an example, in the case where all the finger portions are

Figure 3 | Function to operate the servomotor. (a) Program before
functioning. (b) Functionalized blocks.

Figure 4 | Screen of the stage.

extended as shown in Figure 1 to a state representing the binary
number “10101”, among the blocks shown in Figure 3b, the blocks
relating to the ring finger and the index finger are combined.
During programming, a screen as shown in Figure 4 is displayed on
the PC screen. As an example, the numbers displayed on the stage
shown in Figure 4 indicate that “4” and “1” are smaller, and thatthe fingers corresponding to “4” and “1” are curved in the Finger
Robot. And, the value which made the description of the finger tocorrespond to the binary number is displayed under the numeral,and “0” is displayed under “4” and “1” of Figure 4, and it is proventhat “11010” is obtained when the state of the finger of Figure 4 isexpressed in the binary number. In the case of Figure 4, children
can visually confirm that the binary “11010” corresponds to thedecimal 26 by adding up the increasing decimal number.

2.3. Activity

Figure 1 | Finger Robot.

Figure 2 | Block that specifies the angle.

In lesson, children use Finger Robots in pairs. The teacher presents a problem to move the Finger Robot to a specified state. The
questions will be asked in four different ways. The four problems are the shape of the finger as a photograph, the shape ofthe finger as a letter, the shape of the finger as a binary number,and the shape of the finger as a decimal number. For these problems, consider the program in pairs. The child checks the current state of the robot and then programs it to figure out which
finger to move to get it into the state described in the problem.
Run the program once and transform it from the current state
to the problem state. After you run the program, make sure it isK. Omata and S. Imai / Journal of Robotics, Networking and Artificial Life 6(4) 262–264

264

the same as the problem, fix the program, or work on the next
problem. It is instructed not to change the present state every
time a child makes a mistake.

3. RESULTS OF USING TEACHINGMATERIALSIn order to evaluate the proposed teaching materials, we conducteda programming experience at the University Festival of Tokyo
Gakugei University. Figure 5 shows the author performing a bit
string experience for each child using the proposed teaching materials. The content of the experience is the content which solves theproblem shown in Table 1 using the proposed teaching material.
After the experience, the questionnaire on the teaching material
was carried out for the child. The subjects were 13 children from
1st grade to 5th grade.
The questionnaire was prepared by five methods on eight questions
including the items shown in Table 2 such as impression using thisteaching material and idea on robot teaching material. From theresult of the questionnaire, the children who answered “I want totake a programming class using this robot/I really want to takeit” to Q6 were 92%, and the children who answered “I think you
understand the way of thinking about bit strings.” to Q9 were 75%.
From this fact, it was proven that the child was interested in theidea of the bit string.

Table 1 | Problems solved by the children
Number Problem statement
Shape fingers into a picture (In this article, the photograph isomitted, but only the index finger and middle finger are bent.)
Shape fingers like this “only the thumb and ring and littlefingers are bent”
Shape fingers in the form of the binary number “01010”
Shape fingers as a number “26”

①
②
③
④

Table 2 | Questions (Partial except)
Number

Questions

Q6
Q9

I want to take a programming class using this robot.
If you take a class using this robot, you will understandwell about “binary number”

4. CONCLUSION
In this research, developed a teaching material called Finger Robotthat can be used for programming education in elementary schools.
Using a Finger Robot, elementary school students can learn the ideaof counting binary numbers with their fingers while experiencing programming. By associating the state of the Finger Robot with the binary
representation and decimal number, children can deepen their understanding of the correspondence between binary and decimal numbers.
In the future, plan to carry out endurance tests assuming the use of children, and to establish issues to deal with various developmental stages.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
The authors declare they have no conflicts of interest.

REFERENCES
[1]
[2]
[3]

[4]
Figure 5 | Scene of actual practice.

[5]

QCA, National curriculum in England: computing programmesof study, GOV.UK Department for Education, Manchester, 2013.
K. Hagiwara, Robot programming for elementary school children,
Mie Univ. Fac. Educ. Depart. Bull. Paper 68 (2017), 307–315.
K. Kai, Y. Kimuro, Y. Sakaguchi, H. Yasuura, An educational
method of computer principles for elementary and junior highschool students. IPSJ, Transactions of Information Processing
Society of Japan, 2002, pp. 1121–1131.
T. Bell, I.H. Witten, M. Fellows, Computer science unplugged,Canterbury, 2015.
F. Pohl, The best of Frederik Pohl, Ballantine Books Co., Ltd.,London, 1975.

AUTHORS INTRODUCTION
Mr. Kaito Omata
He received the Bachelor of Education in2019 from Tokyo Gakugei University, Japan.
Currently, he is a master course student at
the University of Tokyo, Japan. His researchinterests include Programming Education andPsychology of Learning and Instruction.

Dr. Shinichi Imai
He graduated doctor course at department ofengineering in Hiroshima University. He works
at department of education in Tokyo Gakugei
University. His research area is about controlsystem design and educational engineering.