For a child learning to code, witnessing a program they’ve written come to life through the movement of a robot can be far more rewarding than watching an equivalent animation on a screen. This vision was championed by Seymour Papert, a professor at MIT and the creator of the educational programming language Logo. Papert was a pioneer in teaching programming through robotics.

Portraits of Seymour Papert with a “Turtle Robot” and Lego robots, as well as the cover of his book “Mindstorms, Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas”, which inspired the toy manufacturer Lego for its product “Lego Mindstorms.”

Unfortunately, most educational robots are quite expensive — in the thousands of euros — and schools cannot afford one per child. Consumer products and toys such as Lego Mindstorm and Lego Boost are considerably cheaper. Their Bluetooth interfaces can be used from a web browser using the experimental Web Bluetooth protocol, which makes them a good match for usage with web-based tools such as Jupyter.

Integrating Jupyter with consumer grade robotics toys

The goal of this internship project is to enhance the user experience of operating popular toy robots from within the Jupyter environment. We will build upon the existing prototypes created by QuantStack team members, leveraging the Web Bluetooth API to ensure seamless functionality within both JupyterLab and JupyterLite.

A significant aspect of this project will be the creation of an intuitive asynchronous programming model. This model should be user-friendly enough for young students to easily program concurrent tasks, while also aligning with our team’s recent advancements in asynchronous Jupyter kernels.

Another critical area of focus will be the optimization of Bluetooth connection management and the selection of the appropriate robot, particularly in a classroom setting. This will involve refining the processes to ensure they are robust, efficient, and user-friendly.

This internship is an opportunity to work on a rapidly evolving open-source stack, with a playful focus.

We are looking for a software engineering intern in their last year of school. We expect candidates to not have professional experience except for earlier internships.

In terms of technical skills, we are looking for students with background in front-end web development to contribute to the development of the JupyterLab project. Experience with any of the following are strong assets to an application:

• JavaScript, TypeScript, and Python programming languages.

• Common frontent frameworks such as React.

Prior experience with Jupyter development specifically is not required. A track record at contributing to open-source software is a huge plus.

First interview with a Technical Director
Second interview the CEO