Assessing industrial end-user programming of robotic production cells: A controlled experiment

Adapting the behavior of robots and their interaction with other machines on the shop floor is typically accomplished by non-programmers. Often these non-programmers use visual languages to specify the robot’s and/or machine’s control logic. While visual languages are explored as a means to enable n...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of systems and software Vol. 195; p. 111547
Main Authors: Mayr-Dorn, Christoph, Winterer, Mario, Salomon, Christian, Hohensinger, Doris, Fürschuss, Harald
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier Inc 01.01.2023
Subjects:
Block-based programming languages
End-user programming
Manufacturing automation
Robot programming
Sequential function charts
Sequential function charts
End-user programming
Block-based programming languages
Manufacturing automation
Robot programming
ISSN:0164-1212, 1873-1228
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Adapting the behavior of robots and their interaction with other machines on the shop floor is typically accomplished by non-programmers. Often these non-programmers use visual languages to specify the robot’s and/or machine’s control logic. While visual languages are explored as a means to enable novices to program, there is little understanding of what problems novices face when tasked with realistic adaptation programming tasks on the shop floor. In this paper, we report the results of a controlled experiment where domain experts in the injection molding industry inspected and changed realistic programs involving a robot, injection molding machine, and additional external machines. We found that participants were comparably quick to understand the program behavior with a familiar sequential function chart-based language and a Blockly-based language used for the first time. We also observed that these non-programmers had difficulty in multiple aspects independent of language due to the interweaving of physical and software-centric interaction between robot and machine. We conclude that assistance needs to go beyond optimizing available language elements to include suggesting relevant programming elements and their sequence. •We compare Blockly and a Sequential Function Chart-based visual language.•Blockly is easy to understand for industrial non-programmers reading it for the first time.•Visual languages provide too little support to non-programmers to implement realistic tasks.•Non-programmers would need additional assistance.•Challenges were robot moving and gripping commands and interaction with external machines.
ISSN:0164-1212
1873-1228
DOI:10.1016/j.jss.2022.111547