[schoen]

There have been physical turtle robots that are programmed using Logo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_(robot)

Part of Seymour Papert's pedagogical idea of programming the turtle seems to me to be that the the students can put themselves mentally in the position of the turtle and ask "how would I know what to do next?", ideally with the insight that we're looking for a rule that can be expressed in language and that answers the question in every situation. That sounds very akin to your lesson!

I guess the Sphero ball might be a kind of update of this.

[intoverflow2]

Beauty of Logo vs other robot command puzzles like Lightbot is Logo isn't just solving puzzles but a gateway to actually being creative with code.

Kid walking away from lightbot: "I completed all the hard challenges"

Kid walking away from Logo: "I drew this flower using code"

Wish more kids coding tools aimed for the latter.