Sketching intentions: comparing different metaphors for programming robots

This paper introduces a new environment for programming robots and physical computing devices---the Spatial Computing Platform (SCP)---and compares it to a text-based programming environment (the Cricket Logo). The SCP simplifies the process of constructing conditional statements that link the robot's inputs and outputs together. It does this by providing the user with a virtual canvas that they can draw rectangles on using the mouse. Each rectangle represents a range of sensor values, and specific outputs can be assigned to each rectangle. When the sensor values enter into the specified range, the outputs will turn on. We designed a study with 60 youth to compare this environment to Cricket Logo, a well-known variant of Logo designed to control robotic devices. We found that participants using the spatial computing platform were able to build programs of higher complexity and make more changes to their programs over the course of an hour-long workshop.