You reminded me of a robot I had as a kid in the early eighties. It had some rubber keys on the top (similar texture to the rubber buttons on a Sinclair Spectrum, but smaller). You could program it with a sequence of moves (IIRC forward, turn right, turn left, pause).
Sorry the vid is in Polish but I think you can get the idea.
It is a talking robot that does "missions" where you have to program it to go forward, backward or turn, take objects from the map, etc.