A human-centric API for programming socially interactive robots

Whilst robots are increasingly being deployed as social agents, it is still difficult to program them to interact socially. This is because current programming tools either require programmers to work at a low level or lack features needed to create certain aspects of social interaction. High level, domain specific tools with features designed specifically to meet the requirements of social interaction have the potential to ease the creation of social applications. We present a domain specific application programming interface (API) that is designed to meet the requirements of social interaction. The Cognitive Dimensions Framework was used as a design tool during the design process and the API was validated by implementing an exemplar application. The evaluation of the API showed that programmers with no robotics knowledge were positively impressed by the notation and that its organization, domain specific interfaces and object oriented nature positively affected several Cognitive Dimensions.