This study presents the authors' recent research and application of a new visual programming language and its development environment: VIPLE (Visual IoT/Robotics Programming Language Environment) at Arizona State University (ASU). ASU VIPLE supports a variety of IoT devices and robots based on an open architecture. Based on computational thinking, VIPLE supports the integration of engineering design process, workflow, fundamental programming concepts, control flow, parallel computing, event-driven programming, and service-oriented computing seamlessly into a wide range of curricula, such as introduction to computing, introduction to engineering, service-oriented computing, and software integration. It is actively used at ASU in several sections of FSE 100: Introduction to Engineering and in CSE 446: Software Integration and Engineering, as well as in several other universities worldwide.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics have gone through three generations of development, from Turing test, logic theory machine, to expert system and self-driving car. In the third-generation today, AI and robotics have collaboratively been used in many areas in our society, including industry, business, manufacture, research, and education. There are many challenging problems in developing AI and robotics applications. We launch this new Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Technology to facilitate the exchange of the latest research and practice in AI and technologies. In this inaugural issue, we first introduce a few key technologies and platforms supporting the third-generation AI and robotics application development based on stacks of technologies and platforms. We present examples of such development environments created by both industry and academia. We also selected eight papers in the related areas to celebrate the foundation of this journal.