Awesome! This is another physical in/physical out programming environment, like Curlybot.
They have sensor blocks, action blocks and logic blocks, which are implemented in Duplo Primo blocks, which can be snapped together.
The only thing is, it seems like the most complicated program possible is sensor->logic->action? There is no such thing as a loop, a conditional, or a variable.
Actually, that's wrong... there is a toggle block that does a sort of limited conditional. And I guess you can use AND to make something slightly more complicated.
I don't really like the way they reported their results. I don't really care about statistics like how many kids played with the blocks and for exactly how long (33 minutes on average). And while isolated anecdotes are interesting, I'd really much rather hear a few detailed stories about how kids used the toys, how their discovery, learning, exploration, and design processes worked. I realize everyone wants to see analysis, but I think you need some combination of analysis ad unfiltered data.
p.6 They talk about kids "pre-symbolic" minds. I wonder how much symbolism there is in BusyBodies. I think BusyBodies elements will communicate mostly with motion, rather than invisible signals. They talk about how kids had trouble getting the signal passing business. Maybe BusyBodies is an improvement here.
Wow, great stuff though.