Designing an API at an appropriate abstraction level for programming social robot applications

James Diprose; Bruce MacDonald; John Hosking; Beryl Plimmer

doi:10.1016/j.jvlc.2016.07.005

Designing an API at an appropriate abstraction level for programming social robot applications

James Diprose^*, Bruce MacDonald, John Hosking, Beryl Plimmer

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

19 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Whilst robots are increasingly being deployed as social agents, it is still difficult to program them to interact socially. To create usable tools for programming these robots, tool developers need to know what abstraction levels are appropriate for programming social robot applications. We explore this through the iterative design and evaluation of an API for programming social robots. The results show that high level primitives, with a close mapping to social interaction, are suitable for programming social robot applications. However, the abstraction level should not be so high that it takes away too much control from programmers. This has the potential to enable programmers to produce high quality social robot applications with less programming effort.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	22-40
Number of pages	19
Journal	Journal of Visual Languages and Computing
Volume	39
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvlc.2016.07.005
Publication status	Published - Apr 2017
Externally published	Yes

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title = "Designing an API at an appropriate abstraction level for programming social robot applications",

abstract = "Whilst robots are increasingly being deployed as social agents, it is still difficult to program them to interact socially. To create usable tools for programming these robots, tool developers need to know what abstraction levels are appropriate for programming social robot applications. We explore this through the iterative design and evaluation of an API for programming social robots. The results show that high level primitives, with a close mapping to social interaction, are suitable for programming social robot applications. However, the abstraction level should not be so high that it takes away too much control from programmers. This has the potential to enable programmers to produce high quality social robot applications with less programming effort.",

keywords = "API, Application programming interfaces, Cognitive dimensions, Design, Human robot interaction, Humanoid robot, Social robot interaction, Usability",

author = "James Diprose and Bruce MacDonald and John Hosking and Beryl Plimmer",

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doi = "10.1016/j.jvlc.2016.07.005",

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AU - Hosking, John

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AB - Whilst robots are increasingly being deployed as social agents, it is still difficult to program them to interact socially. To create usable tools for programming these robots, tool developers need to know what abstraction levels are appropriate for programming social robot applications. We explore this through the iterative design and evaluation of an API for programming social robots. The results show that high level primitives, with a close mapping to social interaction, are suitable for programming social robot applications. However, the abstraction level should not be so high that it takes away too much control from programmers. This has the potential to enable programmers to produce high quality social robot applications with less programming effort.

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Designing an API at an appropriate abstraction level for programming social robot applications

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