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About

Mario Winterer is a researcher specializing in end-user programming, human-robot interaction, and the automation challenges posed by Industry 4.0. His work addresses a critical and growing need: enabling non-programmers — such as factory floor technicians and domain experts — to flexibly program and customize industrial robots and cyber-physical production systems without requiring deep software engineering expertise. Winterer's most influential contributions center on evaluating block-based and visual programming languages for industrial contexts. His highly cited studies on Blockly (2020, 14 citations) and block-based languages more broadly (2021, 17 citations) provide both theoretical grounding and practical case-study evidence for their applicability in robot programming workflows. These works have become key references for researchers and practitioners navigating the intersection of usability and industrial automation. Beyond visual languages, Winterer has explored AI planning approaches, notably investigating PDDL as a programming paradigm for production cells (2022, 7 citations), demonstrating a breadth of methodological interest. His controlled experimental studies further strengthen the empirical foundation of the field. Collectively, his research helps democratize industrial automation, making it more accessible to the diverse, non-specialist workforce that modern smart manufacturing demands.