Assessing the scalability of a multiple robot interface

Abstract

As multiple robot systems become more common, it is necessary to develop scalable human-robot interfaces that permit the inclusion of additional robots without reducing the overall system performance. Workload and situational awareness play key roles in determining the ratio of m operators to n robots. A scalable interface, where m is much smaller than n, will have to manage the operator's workload and promote a high level of situation awareness. This work focused on the development of a scalable interface for a single human-multiple robot system. This interface introduces a relational "halo" display that augments a camera view to promote situational awareness and the management of multiple robots by providing information regarding the robots' relative locations with respect to a selected robot. An evaluation was conducted to determine the scalability of the interface focusing on the effects of increasing the number of robots on workload, situation awareness, and robot usage. Twenty participants completed two bomb defusing tasks: one employing six robots, the other nine. The results indicated that increasing the number of robots increased overall workload and the operator's situation awareness.

Choosing Autonomy Modes for Multirobot Search

“…Some variant of automation through waypoint control was used in each of the reviewed human-in-the-loop simulation studies investigating performance as a function of the size of mobile robot team (Humphrey, Henk, Sewell, Williams, & Adams, 2007;Olsen & Wood, 2004;Trouvain, Schlick, & Mevert, 2003;Trouvain & Wolf, 2002), with differences arising primarily in behavior after reaching a waypoint. As Olsen and Wood (2004) demonstrate, increased automation can drastically affect fan-out, extending it from two to nine in their study.…”

“…In the reviewed studies, two (Humphrey et al, 2007;Trouvain et al, 2003) extend automation to the exploration subtask, and one (Olsen & Wood, 2004) leaves both tasks to the operator. Fan-out values, however, fall in the same range across these experiments, suggesting that either exploration and perceptual search can be shared without cost or that differences in tasks make direct comparison of fan-out values between these studies invalid.…”

Workload, awareness and automation in multiple-robot supervision

“…38 According to Endsley,39 situation awareness consists of three levels: perception, comprehension and projection. Cues are first perceived with human senses.…”

Development and implementation of a team of robotic tractors for autonomous peat moss harvesting

“…Although a large portion of this work has been focused on unmanned air vehicles, several researchers have begun using unmanned ground vehicles as their main platform. Furthermore, human factors researchers have begun to examine the challenges associated with one human operator controlling and/or supervising a team of vehicles (Adams, 2007;Humphrey, Gordon, & Adams, 2006;Humphrey, Henk, Sewell, Williams, & Adams, 2007;Vig & Adams, 2006). Regardless of the application, the aim of these efforts has been directed at providing human operators with an intuitive interface to monitor and/or control a team of vehicles.…”