SOFTWARE ROBOTS FOR PROGRAMMATICALLY CONTROLLING COMPUTER PROGRAMS TO PERFORM TASKS

摘要

Techniques for developing, deploying, and using software robot computer programs for programmatically controlling one or more other computer program(s) to perform a task via an object hierarchy that provides a representation of graphical user interface (GUI) elements of the computer program(s) being controlled. The object hierarchy may include objects corresponding to active GUI elements of the computer program(s) being controlled. The software robot may be configured to generate the object hierarchy, refresh the object hierarchy, and search for objects in the object hierarchy. A software robot may be configured to control multiple computer programs executing on a same device, on different devices, on a same virtual machine, and/or on multiple virtual machines. The multiple computer programs may be implemented using the same or different GUI technologies.