Synchronisation in Extended Robot State Automata

Abstract

Making automation with robots more viable in smaller enterprises requires programming methods aimed at non-experts. In this work, we expand an automata-based programming approach from our previous research to multiple robot arms. This adds the challenge of synchronisation between the robots (to avoid conflicts or deadlocks during execution). The basic process consists of kinesthetically guiding the robot and programming step by step, without a graphical representation of the program or editor. The developed formalism and the corresponding programming method are presented. In a user study, we evaluated the resulting system with regards to usability by experts and non-experts. The experiments suggest that both expert and non-expert users were able solve small tasks with the system. Non-experts were less successful on average than experts, but deemed the system less complex.