Enabling Citizen Roboticists

Dustin Heaton, Jeffrey C. Carver, Monica Anderson

Abstract: Citizen roboticists are lay people who conduct robotics research with the goal of improving the quality of life. The authors surveyed citizen roboticists (i.e. hobbyists) at a conference and via mailing lists to determine the software they need to support automation. Robot automation enables more complicated tasks with minimal extra work. The results of the survey identify which software tools developers should be providing to aid citizen roboticists. In addition, the results indicate that most citizen roboticists use C/C++, so developers should provide support for these languages.