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campbeb6 edited this page May 9, 2016 · 7 revisions

A demonstration of the use of this interface can be found here: LINK

interface

When I was designing this interface, I wanted to create something that was easy and simple to use, while also a somewhat interesting in the process. I wanted it to be somewhat of a learning tool to get young people interested in programming. What resulted from these ideas is an interface that allows the user to load a set of basic instructions into the interface. As the program is being built by the user, the instructions are shown on the screen in order from left to right, the leftmost being the first to be executed. When the user clicks on the "Play" icon in the top left corner, the instructions are sent to the robot at ~half second intervals. while the program is running, the second row of displayed instructions slowly slide to the left and disappear as they are sent to the robot to be executed.

Points of emphasis:

  • Instructions can only be added to the program when it is in the "stopped" state
  • The current state of the interface is displayed in box in the middle of the arrows
  • The program can be "paused" while it is running a program, this prevents the program from sending the next instruction to the robot if the "play" button is pressed again by the user, the program continues executing
  • The current program loaded is displayed in the first row of arrows, to reset the program, the "stop" button must be pressed while the interface is already in the stopped state
  • My 6-year-old cousin was able to learn how to use this interface in a few minutes, and I felt it really served the purpose well.

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