APPROVE: Visual End-User-in-the-Loop Robot Programming with LLMs
arXiv:2608.19281v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Programming robots remains challenging for non-experts, as traditional methods require expert knowledge and even block-based interfaces often lack flexibility. Recent work has explored Large Language Models (LLMs) to automatically generate robot programs from natural language, but these systems remain limited by a lack of transparency, missing mechanisms to ensure alignment with user intent, and little support for reuse. We present APPROVE (AI-Powered Programming for Robots with Visual End-User Feedback), an LLM-based multi-modal end-user programming framework that integrates natural language input with a block-based interface and an explicit user confirmation step. Generated programs are visualized using a block-based interface in Blockly, allowing users to confirm, modify, or reject them before execution. Confirmed functions are stored in a library for reuse, gradually building a set of reliable program components. Our approach contributes a human-centered design for LLM-based robot programming that emphasizes user trust, intent alignment, and reusability.
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[Submitted on 19 Aug 2026]
Title:APPROVE: Visual End-User-in-the-Loop Robot Programming with LLMs
View a PDF of the paper titled APPROVE: Visual End-User-in-the-Loop Robot Programming with LLMs, by Bijan Kavousian and 4 other authors
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Abstract:Programming robots remains challenging for non-experts, as traditional methods require expert knowledge and even block-based interfaces often lack flexibility. Recent work has explored Large Language Models (LLMs) to automatically generate robot programs from natural language, but these systems remain limited by a lack of transparency, missing mechanisms to ensure alignment with user intent, and little support for reuse. We present APPROVE (AI-Powered Programming for Robots with Visual End-User Feedback), an LLM-based multi-modal end-user programming framework that integrates natural language input with a block-based interface and an explicit user confirmation step. Generated programs are visualized using a block-based interface in Blockly, allowing users to confirm, modify, or reject them before execution. Confirmed functions are stored in a library for reuse, gradually building a set of reliable program components. Our approach contributes a human-centered design for LLM-based robot programming that emphasizes user trust, intent alignment, and reusability.
Comments: Accepted for publication in Procedia CIRP, Proceedings of the 20th CIRP Conference on Intelligent Computation in Manufacturing Engineering (ICME 2026)
Subjects:
Robotics (cs.RO); Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC)
Cite as: arXiv:2608.19281 [cs.RO]
(or arXiv:2608.19281v1 [cs.RO] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.19281
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
Submission history
From: Bijan Kavousian [view email] [v1] Wed, 19 Aug 2026 08:22:13 UTC (412 KB)
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