Received November 25, 2018, accepted January 23, 2019, date of publication January 29, 2019, date of current version February 14, 2019. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2895913 A Study on the Suitability of Visual Languages for Non-Expert Robot Programmers JOSÉ MARÍA RODRÍGUEZ CORRAL 1, IVÁN RUÍZ-RUBE 1, ANTÓN CIVIT BALCELLS2, JOSÉ MIGUEL MOTA-MACÍAS1, ARTURO MORGADO-ESTÉVEZ1, AND JUAN MANUEL DODERO 1 1School of Engineering, University of Cádiz, 11519 Cádiz, Spain 2Technical School of Computer Engineering, University of Seville, 41012 Seville, Spain Corresponding author: José María Rodríguez Corral (
[email protected]) This work was supported by the Spanish National Research Agency (AEI), under developed in the framework of the VISAIGLE Project with ERDF funds under Grant TIN2017-85797-R. ABSTRACT A visual programming language allows users and developers to create programs by manipulat- ing program elements graphically. Several studies have shown the benefits of visual languages for learning purposes and their applicability to robot programming. However, at present, there are not enough comparative studies on the suitability of textual and visual languages for this purpose. In this paper, we study if, as with a textual language, the use of a visual language could also be suitable in the context of robot programming and, if so, what the main advantages of using a visual language would be. For our experiments, we selected a sample of 60 individuals among students with adequate knowledge of procedural programming, that was divided into three groups. For the first group of 20 students, a learning scenario based on a textual object- oriented language was used for programming a specific commercial robotic ball with sensing, wireless communication, and output capabilities, whereas for the second and the third group, two learning scenarios based on visual languages were used for programming the robot.