I always loved social sciences as much as I love computers and technology. In my research studies, I try to explore a mixture of both worlds. My main research interests lie in the areas of Software Engineering, Human-Computer Interaction, and Robotics. Humans at first, always!
Current topics
- Supporting open-source development: Open-source communities are known for supporting many software applications. From system-related
programs such as the Linux Kernel to programming languages like Python, open-source development plays an essential role in the software industry. While propriety software depends on the hiring of employees in a company-based
model, open-source communities benefit from collaborations from both employees and volunteers. The critical challenge to keep such communities alive is to gather sufficient workforce. As most open-source projects are primarily
available online, the gateway to these projects tends to be their websites and coding repositories, where limited support is available. As a researcher on the topic, my goal is to investigate ways to support
contributors in open-source communities.
- Robot programming and interaction: Robot sales are increasing year after year. Economics experts explain the dramatic and continued uptick in
robotics by a change in the mindset of manufacturers, who are now automating a broader set of tasks than ever before. Many hardware advancements in robot
technology allowed such robots to become reliable, but the corresponding software support has lagged behind, and the problems this created soon became obvious. Most programming languages are too complex for novices, programming environments do not benefit from more advanced solutions in computer science, and software engineering principles are not applied in most companies. On this matter, my research applies the knowledge created in years of software engineering and human-computer interaction to improve the software-side of robotics.
Among the solutions I have been working on are beginner-friendly solutions that allow users without experience in robotics to program industrial robots, and studies on how to improve programming-related tasks using technologies such as augmented reality devices.
Selected papers
I keep my papers listed on Google Scholar. For those interested in learning more about my work, here is a list of selected articles:
- Dias, Luiz Felipe, Igor Steinmacher, Gustavo Pinto, Daniel Alencar Da Costa, and Marco Gerosa. "How does the shift to GitHub impact project collaboration?." In 2016 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution, pp. 473-477. IEEE, 2016.
- Pinto, Gustavo, Igor Steinmacher, Luiz Felipe Dias, and Marco Gerosa. "On the challenges of open-sourcing proprietary software projects." Empirical Software Engineering 23 (2018): 3221-3247.
- Padala, Hema Susmita, Christopher Mendez, Felipe Fronchetti, Igor Steinmacher, Zoe Steine-Hanson, Claudia Hilderbrand, Amber Horvath et al. "How gender-biased tools shape newcomer experiences in OSS projects." IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 48, no. 1 (2020): 241-259.
- Fronchetti, Felipe, Nico Ritschel, Reid Holmes, Linxi Li, Mauricio Soto, Raoul Jetley, Igor Wiese, and David Shepherd. "Language impact on productivity for industrial end users: A case study from Programmable Logic Controllers." Journal of Computer Languages 69 (2022): 101087.
- Fronchetti, Felipe, David C. Shepherd, Igor Wiese, Christoph Treude, Marco Aurélio Gerosa, and Igor Steinmacher. "Do CONTRIBUTING files provide information about OSS newcomers’ onboarding barriers?." In Proceedings of the 31st ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, pp. 16-28. 2023.
- Ruvimova, Anastasia, Felipe Fronchetti, Boden A. Kahn, Luiz Henrique Susin, Zekeya Hurley, Thomas Fritz, Mark Hancock, and David Shepherd. "Ready Worker One? High-Res VR for the Home Office." In Proceedings of the 29th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, pp. 1-12. 2023.
- Fronchetti, Felipe, Nico Ritschel, Logan Schorr, Chandler Barfield, Gabriella Chang, Rodrigo Spinola, Reid Holmes, and David C. Shepherd. "Block-based Programming for Two-Armed Robots: A Comparative Study." In Proceedings of the 46th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering, pp. 1-12. 2024.
Note: My complete name is Luiz Felipe Fronchetti Dias. When I started as a researcher, I didn't know I could choose what names I wanted to show on my papers. For this reason, you may find old papers where my name is Luiz Felipe Dias instead of Felipe Fronchetti.