(FORTUNE Magazine) – If you think programming your VCR is difficult, pity the poor souls who must give robots their instructions. Factory automation has simplified and streamlined assembly lines, yet programming the robots that work in the factories is still a labor-intensive task, involving writing and rewriting thousands of lines of computer code for each new job. Now software created by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University promises to make the effort much easier by using colorful icons to represent actions. Onika, a graphical user interface created by grad student Matthew Gertz, 27, enables anyone who can use a personal computer to program a robot by simply lining up the proper icons on a computer screen. The edges of each icon are shape- and color-coded so only icons that logically follow each other fit together, like puzzle pieces, preventing you from making a mistake. For example, if you tried to place the icon for "open grip" next to the icon with the house on it, which represents the starting, or "home," position, your program would not work. You would be missing the crucial "move to" icon that would need to come before the "home" icon. The secret to Onika's simplicity is Chimera, its underlying computer operating system for robots. Chimera is an example of object-oriented programming, widely used to create software for corporate networks and databases but rarely used in manufacturing. A conventional computer program is a set of instructions for manipulating a particular set of data; changing the instructions or the data usually requires rewriting the entire program. Object-oriented programming packages pieces of the data and its related instructions into discreet "objects" that embody a certain task, such as "open grip." Because these objects, represented in Onika by icons, are self- contained, they can be reused and assembled into a host of configurations with only minor alterations. Chimera and Onika were developed in the laboratory of Carnegie Mellon professor Pradeep Khosla, who is taking two years off to manage manufacturing technology programs at the federal government's Advanced Research Projects Agency. Says he: "People on the factory floor who don't even know how to write computer code will be able to make changes quickly. Ultimately, this will reduce the cost of making products." About 200 Onika icons are already stored in electronic libraries on the Internet, where they're used by universities and government research labs. K2T of Pittsburgh, a Carnegie Mellon spinoff, is developing commercial versions of Onika and Chimera, which should be available in about a year. Meanwhile, Ph.D. candidate Gertz is still putting his own finishing touches on Onika. He's planning to have an icon that triggers a robot to dance to Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers" completed in time for his doctoral defense in November.-