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Mini‐languages for teaching principles of programming ‐ such as Karel the Robot ‐ were once used in top computer science departments to provide a “gentle introduction” to programming for computer science majors. The paper builds a case for the use of mini‐languages in the context of introductory programming courses for non‐computer science major. We present a study that explored the use of Karel to teach introductory programming for information science majors.

The flexibility of a robot system comes from its ability to be programmed. How the robot is programmed is a main concern of all robot users. A good mechanical arm can be underutilized if it is too difficult to program. The introduction of the Universal Robot Controller™ (URC) has made the possibility of a standard, easy to use, robot programming language a reality. The URC is an open‐architecture, PC‐based robot controller. It will work with virtually any robot and gives the user increased flexibility and capabilities over the standard OEM controllers. The URC uses Windows NT as its operating system. The URC is the ideal platform for a universal robot programming language, RobotScript. It allows one robot language to run all robots in a factory.

There are two fundamental facts about programming languages: there are lots of them; all but a handful are never used beyond the immediate circle of friends of the inventor. An exhaustive survey of all languages used over the past twenty years in Western Europe and the US would be time‐consuming and of questionable utility; however, it seems safe to suggest that the number is considerably in excess of 1,000. Sammet's latest annual survey lists 132 languages currently in use in the United States, and this can only be a minor fraction of those that have been constructed at one time or another.

The growing complexity of industrial robot work‐cells calls for the use of advanced orchestration techniques to promote flexibility and reusability. This paper aims to present a solution based on service‐oriented platforms that endorses the separation of concerns, coordination and execution.

This paper starts with the evaluation of available tools for the orchestration and service generation. Endorsing the missing features depicted in that evaluation, the paper describes developments of concepts and software and the evaluation made.

From the early evaluations made in this paper, the SCXML‐based purposed language is more adapted to the industrial robotic cell scenario than existing alternatives. The generation of services allow the integration without knowledge from any programming language.

This approach's main drawback, as described by some users, was the lack of some programming features: simple math operations and conditional statements.

This paper fulfils two partially unsolved problems: adequate languages for orchestration of service oriented on the device level and purposes techniques for the specification of services using robot programming languages.

Describes intuitively the fact that four types of formal languages can be generated by four types of grammars or can be recognized by four types of automata. Gives the relationships between context‐sensitive languages and computer programming languages. Defines and investigates parallel productions, parallel grammars, and context‐free parallel grammars. Shows that context‐sensitive languages exist which can be generated by context‐free parallel grammars. In addition, states the advantages of context‐free parallel grammars. Also shows that context‐free languages (CFL) are a proper subset of context‐free parallel languages (CFPL). Furthermore, CFPL is a more effective tool for modelling computer programming languages than CFL, especially for parallel computer programming languages, for example, the ADA programming language. Also illustrates context‐sensitive property of recognizing hand‐written characters. The results may have useful applications in artificial intelligence, model parallel computer programming languages, software engineering, expert systems and robotics.

Seeks to argue that procedural literacy, of which programming is a part, is critically important for new media scholars and practitioners and that its opposite, procedural illiteracy, leaves one fundamentally unable to grapple with the essence of computational media.

This paper looks at one of the earliest historical calls for universal procedural literacy, explores how games can serve as an ideal object around which to organize a procedural literacy curriculum, and describes a graduate course developed at Georgia Tech, Computation as an Expressive Medium, designed to be a first course in procedural literacy for new media practitioners.

To achieve a broader and more profound procedural literacy will require developing an extended curriculum that starts in elementary school and continues through college. Encountering procedurality for the first time in a graduate level course is like a first language course in which students are asked to learn the grammar and vocabulary, read and comment on literature, and write short stories, all in one semester; one's own students would certainly agree that this is a challenging proposition.

New media scholars and practitioners, including game designers and game studies scholars, may assume that the “mere” technical details of code can be safely bracketed out of the consideration of the artifact. Contrary to this view, it is argued that procedural literacy, of which programming is a part, is critically important for new media scholars and practitioners and that its opposite, procedural illiteracy, leaves one fundamentally unable to grapple with the essence of computational media.

The intelligent agent object (IAO) system is a multi‐paradigm development environment which can be used to create intelligent agent systems for manufacturing or other domains. The IAO system was developed from the rule‐based object (RBO) system which is a programming environment integrating both the rule‐based and object‐oriented paradigms. Propagation‐oriented programming, access‐oriented programming and group‐oriented programming are among the extensions included in the IAO system. Its most unusual contribution is the propagation‐oriented programming paradigm which is not found in most systems. A key application is the messenger inferencing structure which is a user‐extendable framework supporting multiple knowledge representation, meta‐inference control, and distributed inference. This allows the IAO system to go beyond predicate logic based production rule programming. New developments are also introduced for access‐oriented programming. The IAO system can be used to develop integrated manufacturing systems such as the prototype automated guided vehicle planning and control system, which is briefly described.

Numerous challenges in education emerge as our technology-driven society rapidly evolves and manifests more exigent requirements from engineering professionals. Higher education, nonetheless, seems to adapt to such requirements at an unequal speed, generating some tensions between industry and higher education institutions. The purpose of this paper is to share the experiences obtained through a process of assessment and redesign of a large enrollment course of programming from which the authors developed a systematic approach for course design/redesign.

A mixed method approach was deployed for data gathering and evaluation, consisting of close-ended surveys, open-ended questionnaires, information matrices and state of the art compilation. Triangulation of the information offered clear data about the necessity of curriculum redesign; therefore, a new programming course curriculum encompassed with relevant necessities in engineering and science was developed.

The authors produced a coherent and dynamic systematic path for assessment and design/redesign of course curriculum, which the authors find extremely helpful to improve negotiation processes inside higher education institutions, as it can be implemented to improve any large enrollment course curricula in engineering and science.

By following the systematic path for assessment and design/redesign of curricula the authors developed, higher education systems could embark more efficiently in the ever-challenging process of adapt their courses and programs to tackle the upcoming demands of our society.

So far, a systematic path for assessment and design/redesign of course curriculum was not published, and it supports the improvement of pedagogical approaches in academic institutions.

This paper aims to propose a new technique for programming robotized machining tasks based on intuitive human–machine interaction. This will enable operators to create robot programs for small-batch production in a fast and easy way, reducing the required time to accomplish the programming tasks.

This technique makes use of online walk-through path guidance using an external force/torque sensor, and simple and intuitive visual programming, by a demonstration method and symbolic task-level programming.

Thanks to this technique, the operator can easily program robots without learning every robot-specific language and can design new tasks for industrial robots based on manual guidance.

The main contribution of the paper is a new procedure to program machining tasks based on manual guidance (walk-through teaching method) and user-friendly visual programming. Up to now, the acquisition of paths and the task programming were done in separate steps and in separate machines. The authors propose a procedure for using a tablet as the only user interface to acquire paths and to make a program to use this path for machining tasks.

First results of a research project at Bolton Institute show advantages in using a text‐based off‐line programmer in conjunction with a low‐cost PC‐based kinematic simulator. The system being developed could mean for small companies an economical alternative to using comprehensive robot simulation packages.