The new wave of collaborative robots, designed to work alongside humans, promised to bring the automation previously seen in large-scale industrial settings to new, diverse contexts.
Yet one major barrier to adoption remains: programming. As of now, it takes years of training to learn to program robots. To solve this issue we have applied ideas found in an easy-to-learn, easy-to-use programming language called Scratch.
Using its concepts we created a drag-and-drop, block-based interface that empowers adults with little or no prior experience to program a one-armed industrial robot.
To evaluate our programming environment, called CoBlox, we conducted a user study with 67 adult novices comparing it to two widely used tools, ABB’s Flex Pendant and Universal Robot’s Polyscope.
In this study CoBlox clearly outperformed the competition. Using CoBlox, users completed at least 21% more tasks (show chart of completions) and they completed them at least 37% faster (show chart of timings).
CoBlox not only improved their performance, but it also improved their experience. (like thumbs-up symbol?)  In a post-experiment survey CoBlox users rated it as easier-to-use and easier-to-learn in addition to rating it almost twice as high in overall satisfaction (show chart of satisfaction).
Collaborative robots stand to revolutionize the landscape of robotics, bringing automation to small factories, labs, and workshops. For collaborative robots to reach their potential, they must be programmable by non-experts.
The dramatic results of this study suggest, as never before, that we are on the verge of making this a reality.
