Rehabilitation Robotics Jumpstation

Thesis - David S Lees

Graphical programming language for service robots in semi-structured environments (1994)

 One of the main obstacles to programming a robot to do useful work is the difficulty of establishing effective, efficient communication between the programmer and the robot. In many environments we cannot depend on CAD drawings or a pre-existing assembly sequence to specify the motions that the robot must execute. However, in most cases the programmer can envision the task that the robot is to accomplish. The difficulty lies in creating a user interface that effectively communicates the programmer's wishes to the robot. To address this problem, an environment for programming robot manipulations with graphical symbols (RoboGlyph) was developed, and experiments were conducted to evaluate its performance.

Programs are assembled by dragging symbols representing robot positions and actions onto a "storyboard" that stores the sequence of motions needed to perform a task. Also, force-sensing is used to detect and control interactions with the environment, so the user is not responsible for fine-positioning tasks.

The RoboGlyph system is being used to program a service robot for severely disabled (high-level quadriplegic) users. In service applications, it is valuable if the users of a robot can modify its manipulation programs themselves. RoboGlyph was designed to be easier to use and more reliable than traditional text-based programming languages and to be accessible to a wider user population.

Experiments with RoboGlyph have shown that, after only one or two hours of training, computer literate health care professionals with no robotics experience can write working robot programs as quickly as expert robot programmers. Expert programmers who use RoboGlyph can program at least as fast as they can with textual robot programming languages, after only one hour of training. The programs written by all RoboGlyph users were much easier to read and maintain than those written in text-based languages.

Theses

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