Title :
The Impact of Human–Automation Collaboration in Decentralized Multiple Unmanned Vehicle Control
Author :
Cummings, M.L. ; How, Jonathan P. ; Whitten, Andrew ; Toupet, Olivier
Author_Institution :
Massachusetts Inst. of Technol., Cambridge, MA, USA
fDate :
3/1/2012 12:00:00 AM
Abstract :
For future systems that require one or a small team of operators to supervise a network of automated agents, automated planners are critical since they are faster than humans for path planning and resource allocation in multivariate, dynamic, time-pressured environments. However, such planners can be brittle and unable to respond to emergent events. Human operators can aid such systems by bringing their knowledge-based reasoning and experience to bear. Given a decentralized task planner and a goal-based operator interface for a network of unmanned vehicles in a search, track, and neutralize mission, we demonstrate with a human-on-the-loop experiment that humans guiding these decentralized planners improved system performance by up to 50%. However, those tasks that required precise and rapid calculations were not significantly improved with human aid. Thus, there is a shared space in such complex missions for human-automation collaboration.
Keywords :
autonomous aerial vehicles; decentralised control; inference mechanisms; knowledge based systems; multi-agent systems; path planning; resource allocation; automated agent network; automated planners; decentralized multiple unmanned vehicle control; decentralized planners; goal-based operator interface; human-automation collaboration; knowledge-based reasoning; multivariate environments; path planning; resource allocation; time-pressured environments; Automation; Decision support systems; Human factors; Supervisory control; Target tracking; Trajectory; Unmanned aerial vehicles; Command and control; decentralized task planning; decision support systems; human supervisory control; human–automation interaction; unmanned vehicles;
Journal_Title :
Proceedings of the IEEE
DOI :
10.1109/JPROC.2011.2174104