Hobby Robot Control

I'm 3D printing a BCN3D MoveO 5-DOF robot to eventually turn over to my nephew.  I'm looking for a motion control and UI package and I've noticed some LinuxCNC implementations with robots.  My home-brew CNC router is running LinuxCNC with some UI tweaks so I would rate myself a LinuxCNC novice.

Is there some sort of pendent/game pad interface to drive a robot in LinixCNC?  Is there a way to jog and record locations for motion playback?  I'm looking for simple interface on the front end for an 10 year old.

With me doing the work on the back end is LinuxCNC a good fit?
 

it is relatively trivial to use linuxcnc to control the joints directly (Joint mode) by way of G0, G1 Gcode commands. Location recording is also possible:
forum.linuxcnc.org/21-axis/30986-axis-po...gger?start=70#294516
Whether this can be handled by a 10 year old is a different question

If you want to also control the robot in cartesian space you would need to develop a kinematic model for it which will definitely go substantially beyond 'novice' level.

Well this is no ordinary 10 year old

Cartesian space for sure, I think? If I enter a G0 or G1 command to move to a position with X/Y coordinates is that not Cartesian (linear)?

In that case your first job would be to create the forward and inverse kinematic models for your 5 DOF robot as the generic serial kinematic that is included in LinuxCNC only handles manipulators with 6 axes. Also you would likely need to create a vismach model of your robot to verify your kinematic model is working properly.
Depending on your background there might be a fairly steep learning curve involved. It's an interesting project though given enough time and motivation.