Node Primitives: an open end-user programming platform for social robots

TL;DR

This paper introduces Node Primitives, an accessible platform combining a Python-based framework and web interface, enabling non-experts to easily program social robots for human interaction tasks.

Contribution

It presents a novel end-user programming platform for social robots that integrates distributed communication and an intuitive web interface for behavior customization.

Findings

Successful development of a gesture-controlled robot application

Positive usability feedback from end-user testing

Demonstrated ease of programming for non-technical users

Abstract

With the expected adoption of robots able to seamlessly and intuitively interact with people in real-world scenarios, the need arises to provide non-technically-skilled users with easy-to-understand paradigms for customising robot behaviors. In this paper, we present an interaction design robot programming platform for enabling multidisciplinary social robot research and applications. This platform is referred to Node Primitives (NEP) and consists of two main parts. On the one hand, a ZeroMQ and Python-based distributed software framework has been developed to provide inter-process communication and robot behavior specification mechanisms. On the other hand, a web-based end-user programming (EUP) interface has been developed to allow for an easy and intuitive way of programming and executing robot behaviors. In order to evaluate NEP, we discuss the development of a human-robot interaction application using arm gestures to control robot behaviors. A usability test for the proposed EUP interface is also presented.