Santhanam Sivasurya, Hecking Tobias, Schreiber Andreas, Wagner Stefan
Institute for Software Technology, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.
Institute of Software Engineering, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
PeerJ Comput Sci. 2022 Feb 9;8:e866. doi: 10.7717/peerj-cs.866. eCollection 2022.
Bots have emerged from research prototypes to deployable systems due to the recent developments in machine learning, natural language processing and understanding techniques. In software engineering, bots range from simple automated scripts to decision-making autonomous systems. The spectrum of applications of bots in software engineering is so wide and diverse, that a comprehensive overview and categorization of such bots is needed. Existing works considered selective bots to be analyzed and failed to provide the overall picture. Hence it is significant to categorize bots in software engineering through analyzing why, what and how the bots are applied in software engineering. We approach the problem with a systematic mapping study based on the research articles published in this topic. This study focuses on classification of bots used in software engineering, the various dimensions of the characteristics, the more frequently researched area, potential research spaces to be explored and the perception of bots in the developer community. This study aims to provide an introduction and a broad overview of bots used in software engineering. Discussions of the feedback and results from several studies provide interesting insights and prospective future directions.
由于机器学习、自然语言处理和理解技术的最新发展，聊天机器人已从研究原型发展为可部署系统。在软件工程中，聊天机器人的范围从简单的自动化脚本到决策自主系统。聊天机器人在软件工程中的应用范围非常广泛且多样，因此需要对这类聊天机器人进行全面的概述和分类。现有工作只考虑了部分需要分析的聊天机器人，未能提供整体情况。因此，通过分析聊天机器人在软件工程中为何被应用、应用了什么以及如何应用来对软件工程中的聊天机器人进行分类具有重要意义。我们基于该主题发表的研究文章，通过系统映射研究来解决这个问题。本研究重点关注软件工程中使用的聊天机器人的分类、特征的各个维度、研究较多的领域、有待探索的潜在研究空间以及开发者社区对聊天机器人的看法。本研究旨在对软件工程中使用的聊天机器人进行介绍和广泛概述。对几项研究的反馈和结果的讨论提供了有趣的见解和未来潜在的发展方向。
