A STEM-Inspired Programmable Robot Designed for young, hands-on Programmers!

2. Download Software

mBot 2.0 supports block-based graphical programming and Python programming.

1. For block-based programming, the mBlock app is a one-stop coding platform tailored to coding education, trusted by educators and learners alike. There are 3 ways to access the mBlock app:

2. For Python or MicroPython programming, the mBlock-Python Editor is a Python editor oriented to beginners, applicable to various Python courses, such as Software & Hardware Programming, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Data Science. You can access it here:

3. If you are an Educator looking to introduce mBot 2.0 in the Classroom, see the resources on CyberPi below:

4. Or look at these mBot 2.0 Getting Started Activities

The mBot2 Getting Started Activities are developed for students between 11 to 14 years old and their educators. Overall, the lessons are designed to be accessible, despite having different and increasing complexity levels.

Each lesson introduces a different and exciting feature from the mBot2, along with some basic concepts of programming. The knowledge gained from each lesson helps to build towards more advanced activities, while the lessons increase in complexity as the learner moves on. For example, the movements of the robot are introduced in Lesson 1 and this is used in many of the subsequent lessons. The possibilities of the Quad RGB sensor are presented in lesson 5, to be later used in lesson 8.

The lessons are briefly described below:

Activity Name	Description	Key concepts
1. Let’s move	Students discover the mBot2 and the mBlock software and learn how to drive the robot with precision. This knowledge will be used in most of the following lessons. Students will also design a simple maze and program the mBot2 to (manually) navigate through it.	Precise movements and corresponding coding blocks.
2. Sensing = data	Students will work with the different sensors integrated into the mBot2; they will learn how to use them with their corresponding code blocks, and to visualize data from the sensors on the integrated full-color display.	Mode of operation of the sensors.Different approaches to display and visualize data on the display.Differences between Live and Upload mode in mBlock 5.
3. Listen to mBot2	Students will learn how to control the speaker and microphone with the code blocks in mBlock 5. They will also create a program where the mBot2 plays a recorded sound if it meets a certain condition while driving around.	Text to speech (TTS) and Voice recognition (Speech to Text, STT) using the built-in speaker and microphone. Running multiple tasks side by side.
4. Seeing with sound	Students will learn what ultrasound is, how it is used in a sensor, and they will also create a program to make the mBot2 drive in a loop by turning after detecting obstacles on the road.	Detecting an obstacle or a range by using the ultrasonic sensor. Using loops and conditional statements for making the mBot2 drive while avoiding obstacles.
5. Sightseeing	Students will learn how a color sensor works, how are they used in real life, and they will program the mBot2 to become a tour bus that visits different landmarks in a city. This knowledge will be also applied in lessons 7 and 8.	Mode of operation (physics of light) of the color sensor/line follower. Color and line identification- Making the mBot2 follow a line and having it perform actions based on color detection.
6. Careful drive	Students will learn how to use the gyroscope accelerometer of the mBot2 and its code blocks, and they will program the mBot2 to adjust its driving behavior if it detects inclinations on the road.	Mode of operation of gyroscopes and accelerometers (as Inertial Measurement Units, IMU). Coding the mBot2 to adapt to road conditions based on IMU data.
7. A network game	Students will learn to have multiple mBot2s communicating with each other wirelessly without the need for a WIFI access point. They will program a simple game where multiple mBot2s search for a color and the first one to find it wins. This knowledge will also be used in lesson 8.	Wireless data transfer in ad-hoc networks. Data exchange in loops and events.
8. mBot2 at your service	By learning how to set up a WIFI connection with the mBot2, students will also learn to use onboard speech recognition, and they will apply this knowledge in an activity where the mBot2 becomes a robot waiter who talks to its customers.	Using WIFI infrastructure mode with the mBot2 for speech recognition and speech synthesis. Offloading heavy computing like speech recognition to cloud services. Structuring code by applying “own blocks” (functions).
9. mBot2 in the wild	In this special lesson, students will learn some principles of Artificial Intelligence by using the Teachable Machine extension in mBlock5. They will apply their knowledge to recreate a natural ecosystem where the mBot2 behaves like an animal.	Learning about Machine Learning and applying it with local processing only on block-based programming. Establishing a new communication protocol between the mBot2 and the computer.

Throughout the lessons students are encouraged, with the consent of educators, to document their learning outcomes by video and publish them, as a way to gain pride in their work and lead their conversation about Computer Science and STEAM in the classroom.