RoboFlow: A flow-based visual programming language for mobile manipulation tasks

General-purpose robots can perform a range of useful tasks in human environments; however, programming them to robustly function in all possible environments that they might encounter is unfeasible. Instead, our research aims to develop robots that can be programmed by its end-users in their context...

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Published in:Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation pp. 5537 - 5544
Main Authors: Alexandrova, Sonya, Tatlock, Zachary, Cakmak, Maya
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Published: IEEE 01.05.2015
Subjects:
Computer languages
Mobile communication
Navigation
Programming profession
Robots
Visualization
ISSN:1050-4729
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Abstract General-purpose robots can perform a range of useful tasks in human environments; however, programming them to robustly function in all possible environments that they might encounter is unfeasible. Instead, our research aims to develop robots that can be programmed by its end-users in their context of use, so that the robot needs to robustly function in only one particular environment. This requires intuitive ways in which end-users can program their robot. To that end, this paper contributes a flow-based visual programming language, called RoboFlow, that allows programming of generalizable mobile manipulation tasks. RoboFlow is designed to (i) ensure a robust low-level implementation of program procedures on a mobile manipulator, and (ii) restrict the high-level programming as much as possible to avoid user errors while enabling expressive programs that involve branching, looping, and nesting. We present an implementation of RoboFlow on a PR2 mobile manipulator and demonstrate the generalizability and error handling properties of RoboFlow programs on everyday mobile manipulation tasks in human environments.
AbstractList General-purpose robots can perform a range of useful tasks in human environments; however, programming them to robustly function in all possible environments that they might encounter is unfeasible. Instead, our research aims to develop robots that can be programmed by its end-users in their context of use, so that the robot needs to robustly function in only one particular environment. This requires intuitive ways in which end-users can program their robot. To that end, this paper contributes a flow-based visual programming language, called RoboFlow, that allows programming of generalizable mobile manipulation tasks. RoboFlow is designed to (i) ensure a robust low-level implementation of program procedures on a mobile manipulator, and (ii) restrict the high-level programming as much as possible to avoid user errors while enabling expressive programs that involve branching, looping, and nesting. We present an implementation of RoboFlow on a PR2 mobile manipulator and demonstrate the generalizability and error handling properties of RoboFlow programs on everyday mobile manipulation tasks in human environments.
Author Alexandrova, Sonya
Tatlock, Zachary
Cakmak, Maya
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  givenname: Maya
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  fullname: Cakmak, Maya
  organization: Comput. Sci. & Eng. Dept., Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
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Snippet General-purpose robots can perform a range of useful tasks in human environments; however, programming them to robustly function in all possible environments...
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StartPage 5537
SubjectTerms Computer languages
Mobile communication
Navigation
Programming profession
Robots
Visualization
Title RoboFlow: A flow-based visual programming language for mobile manipulation tasks
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