Software support for building end-user programming environments in the automation domain

Projects in the automation domain often require that end users, who are the machine operators, have means to change control software to make adaptations and optimizations for the machining task at hand. Although they usually do not have any software development expertise, they intervene in safety-critical software systems. This results in high demands on end-user programming environments with respect to supporting, guiding, and supervising end users. In this paper we present a software framework which is intended to serve as a basis for developing end-user programming environments. The main parts of this framework are a domain-specific language for programming automation solutions at a high level of abstraction, different visual editors for supporting end users, an approach for checking program changes against formal specifications, a variability modeling approach for representing high-level user decisions, and an approach for setting up customized end-user environments from models.