How to Overcome the Difficulties in Programming and Debugging Mobile Social Robots?

We studied the programming and debugging processes of an autonomous mobile social robot with a focus on the programmers. This process is time-consuming in a populated environment where a mobile social robot is designed to interact with real pedestrians. From our observations, we identified two types of time-wasting behaviors among programmers: cherry-picking and a shortage of coverage in their testing. We developed a new tool, a test generator framework, to help avoid these testing time-wasters. This framework generates new testing scenarios to be used in a simulator by blending a user-prepared test with pre-stored pedestrian patterns. Finally, we conducted a user study to verify the effects of our test generator. The results showed that our test generator significantly reduced the programming and debugging time needed for autonomous mobile social robots.CCS CONCEPTS •Computer systems organization $\rightarrow$Robotics