Michael Sassin

Creating user-intended programs with programming by demonstration

Programming by demonstration (PbD) is a new paradigm for the programming of devices (robots, household appliances, machines) or interactive software (text or graphics editors). The system enables programming without explicit coding. As a prototype of a new PbD-system, the programming by demonstration graphics editor, ProDeGE+, with extendable domain theory is introduced. The prototype illustrates how generalized functions can be generated based on a set of action sequences that are demonstrated in an interactive system. Additional interactions with users (dialog-based learning) help to reduce the hypothesis space of the PbD system. This can help to ensure that the generated function is the same as the user-intended function. Finally, the new approach enables users to extend the domain theory of the graphics editor using PbD so that they have an opportunity to reduce the limits of the given domain theory while the system is in use.<<ETX>>