User-Friendly Robot Environment for Creation of Social Scenarios - Foundations on Natural and Artificial Computation - page 217

3.2 Hybrid Command Structure
The textual robot language used provides an architectural advantage that the
output of every command module is a string. Most of these modules will have a
string as input as well, making it very easy to connect these modules. Since the
language gives solely the option to connect new commands in a serial or parallel
way string command generation is straight forward. It means that command
generation becomes merely a choice of selecting a sequence of commands. The
graphical tool allows multiple state sequences, combined with regular commands
like 'Say', 'Wait', or its generic command 'GenerateCommand' that converge to
a single string using the 'Serial' or 'Parallel' commands.
The graphical tool allows for merging modules to a single one, to get a layered
abstraction for commands and command groups. On the other hand it is also
possible to open and edit the compound structure of a merged module. The focus
in the near future will be on the construction of these robot command modules
on different levels of abstraction. Due to the modular concept of this approach
an incremental abstraction and refinement of robot behavior will be constructed.
4 Example of Social Behavior Creation - User Point of
View
In the previous sections a framework for parallel robot control with text-like
commands has been given. Although simple from a technical point of view, the
creation of robot behaviors has where a user solely needs to select graphical
blocks and connect them such that they provide the right sensory or state in-
formation and generate a text string to command the robot. In case such a
graphical block does not exist, the user needs to develop a routine call that eval-
uates relevant sensory information and generates a command string as described
in Figure 2, keeping in mind that multiple commands can be placed between
square brackets ([]), and are either separated by a | for parallel or a & for serial
execution. Users are able to compound within TiVIPE a set of these blocks to a
single block without additional programming.
The created framework allows a scenario designer to decide what blocks are
needed and in collaboration with a developer to construct a set of useful graphical
components of more complex robot behaviors or scenarios. When these blocks
are available the users solely need to connect some of these modules, eventually
these modules might have internal parameters that can be modified.
A student designer was used as a test person to see how the social scenario cre-
ation that includes robot implementation will be accomplished. He chose to make
a hand shaking behavior between a robot and a child. He first got acquainted
with the TiViPE and the robot embodiment. Subsequently, he explored the de-
grees of movement of the different joints of the robot, and got acquainted with
the starting and end angles of joint movements. In parallel he did study on hu-
man motion organization - how each movement that is a part of a hand shaking
interaction behavior is constructed and organized. For this purpose the student