Improvement of P-CUBE: Algorithm education tool for visually impaired persons

As a method of teaching fundamental programming concepts to visually impaired persons and novice programmers, we developed the P-CUBE algorithm education tool, with which users are able to control a mobile robot simply by positioning wooden blocks on a mat. The fundamental programming concepts taught by P-CUBE consist of three elements: sequences, branches and loops. The P-CUBE system consists of a mobile robot, a program mat, programming blocks, and a personal computer (PC). The programming blocks utilize radio frequency identification (RFID) tags alone, and thus require no precision equipment such as microcomputers. Furthermore, since P-CUBE is designed to be operated via tactile information, it can be utilized by visually impaired persons. In this paper, we report on the P-CUBE system configuration and a programming workshop held for visuarlly impaired persons. We then propose P-CUBE device improvements formulated through subjective assessments obtained from workshop participants.