The Interaction Flow Editor: A New Human-Robot Interaction Rapid Prototyping Interface

Human-robot interaction can be regarded as a flow between users and robots.\nDesigning good interaction flows takes a lot of effort and needs to be field\ntested. Unfortunately, the interaction flow design process is often very\ndisjointed, with users experiencing prototypes, designers forming those\nprototypes, and developers implementing them as independent processes. In this\npaper, we present the Interaction Flow Editor (IFE), a new human-robot\ninteraction prototyping tool that enables everyday users to create and modify\ntheir own interactions, while still providing a full suite of features that is\npowerful enough for developers and designers to create complex interactions. We\nalso discuss the Flow Engine, a flexible and adaptable framework for executing\nrobot interaction flows authors through the IFE. Finally, we present our case\nstudy results that demonstrates how older adults, aged 70 and above, can design\nand iterate interactions in real-time on a robot using the IFE.\n