The Next Generation of Human-Drone Partnerships: Co-Designing an Emergency Response System

Abstract

The use of semi-autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to support emergency response scenarios, such as fire surveillance and search and rescue, offers the potential for huge societal benefits. However, designing an effective solution in this complex domain represents a "wicked design" problem, requiring a careful balance between trade-offs associated with drone autonomy versus human control, mission functionality versus safety, and the diverse needs of different stakeholders. This paper focuses on designing for situational awareness (SA) using a scenario-driven, participatory design process. We developed SA cards describing six common design-problems, known as SA demons, and three new demons of importance to our domain. We then used these SA cards to equip domain experts with SA knowledge so that they could more fully engage in the design process. We designed a potentially reusable solution for achieving SA in multi-stakeholder, multi-UAV, emergency response applications.

Towards a Model-Integrated Runtime Monitoring Infrastructure for Cyber-Physical Systems

“…For this purpose we used Dronology, a UAV management and control system that supports the flights of multiple physical or simulated drones [12]. Dronology is available as a research environment and we analyzed the source code and published descriptions (e.g., [2], [3], [32]), to identify components that provided useful runtime monitoring information. The first evaluation focused on modeling the main elements, i.e., UAVs representing MoAgents, modeled as Drones, and the DroneState and DroneCommands sent to the individual UAVs representing MoProperties.…”

Improving Usability of Search and Rescue Decision Support Systems: WARA-PS Case Study

“…Several works come up with interface design implications for improved SA in SAR scenarios, namely a) the interface should be capable of providing a complete and quick to interpret overview of the rescue mission [5], b) maps should be rather simplified with no extra markers or pointers to support better readability [6], c) immersive experiences based on Virtual Reality (VR) technologies have a positive effect on operators' SA [7]. The majority of SAR interfaces reported in relevant works [3], [5], [8], [9] use some sort of a dashboard to present information and enable control. Interfaces of earlier SAR systems, i.e.…”

“…the live feed from the agent's camera (if available), a 2D or 3D map with positioning information, and status information of the agent with its control interface. Dashboards of more recent SAR systems [8], [9] with semior fully autonomous agents tend to focus on a larger picture of an ongoing mission.…”

Hazard analysis for human-on-the-loop interactions in sUAS systems

“…Various frameworks, checklists, and templates exist to guide systems and software engineers through the process of identifying and mitigating hazards associated with the development and deployment of sUAS [19]. However, these tend to focus on system-level hazards while paying scant attention to the unique human interface aspects of multi-user, multi-agent systems that are emerging in the sUAS domain [1,42,45,67]. Furthermore, while Human-related hazards in the sUAS domain share commonalities with those from several -Preprint -Accepted for publication at ESEC/FSE 2021 Final published version available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/3468264.3468534 other domains such as multi-agent robotics, autonomous vehicles, and drones used in the defense domain, they also exhibit unique safety concerns introduced by the deployment of remotely controlled sUAS in potentially populated areas, limited training of the remote pilots in control (RPICs) who may be ill-prepared to handle off-nominal cases, and a rapidly emergent market of sUAS applications, in many cases developed by hobbyist developers without training in safety assurance.…”

“…This analysis resulted in a set of domain-level hazard trees designed for safety analysis of diverse sUAS systems which we evaluated in two ways -first, against detailed accounts of publicly reported sUAS incidents, and second, through a study involving six developers with domain experience working with sUAS. Examples throughout the paper are primarily drawn from the publicly described DroneResponse system [1,12,15].…”