LRS1: UN ROBOT SOCIAL DE BAJO COSTO PARA LA ASIGNATURA “PROGRAMACIÓN 1”

Los robots sociales han generado efectos positivos en el contexto educativo a través de diferentes roles: tutor, compañero y aprendiz. Los estudiantes de la asignatura “Programación 1” se han mostrado desmotivados en los últimos semestres. En aras de motivar el aprendizaje de los estudiantes de “Programación 1” se propone la incorporación de un robot social dentro de la dinámica de las clases. La adquisición de robots sociales comerciales es muy costosa, por lo tanto, se construye un robot social minimalista con tres habilidades principales: hablar, cambiar la expresión facial (triste, normal y feliz) y mover el cuello (arriba, abajo, izquierda, derecha y centro). El robot social construido (denominado LRS1) fue incorporado como tutor en una actividad denominada “dictado” que  pertenece al normal desarrollo de la asignatura, cuyos resultados obtenidos favorecen la incorporación de un robot social de bajo costo para motivar el aprendizaje en la asignatura

A systematic mapping study of API usability evaluation methods

An Application Programming Interface (API) provides a programmatic interface to a software component that is often offered publicly and may be used by programmers who are not the API’s original designers. APIs play a key role in software reuse. By reusing high quality components and services, developers can increase their productivity and avoid costly defects. The usability of an API is a qualitative characteristic that evaluates how easy it is to use an API. Recent years have seen a considerable increase in research efforts aiming at evaluating the usability of APIs. An API usability evaluation can identify problem areas and provide recommendations for improving the API. In this systematic mapping study, we focus on 47 primary studies to identify the aim and the method of the API usability studies. We investigate which API usability factors are evaluated, at which phases of API development is the usability of API evaluated and what are the current limitations and open issues in API usability evaluation. We believe that the results of this literature review would be useful for both researchers and industry practitioners interested in investigating the usability of API and new API usability evaluation methods

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