Physical Turtle for Education

• Mike Sandford
• http://www.mikedeplume.com
• Presentation - https://bitbucket.org/mikedeplume/turtle_presentation (and it’s written with the turtle module!)
• Blog article - http://www.mikedeplume.com/2013/02/20/a-physical-turtle/
• https://pypi.python.org/pypi/PhysicalTurtle
• Software https://bitbucket.org/mikedeplume/physical-turtle

pip install physicalturtle

Draw an obstacle

draw polygons

forward(step)
right(angle)

Terminate loop by counting steps, or angles

make it so the turtle can feel the obstacle

tk.touch_right()   # are we touching something on the right

end up with gap as turtle stops before hitting the solid line

NB - if turtle starts on solid line, it can’t move.

Simple outline following

test if barrier still there, move forward a bit, test again ...

• go round entire object
• go round object until going back in original direction - though the simplistic version (totalturn % 360 == 0) can lead to loops
• learning - think about object, what’s possible
• thinking about how to draw the maze can be more interesting than navigating the maze
• lots of things that teachers can talk about