Usage of different levels of functional information in multiple robot operation

When supervising a team of agents, the operator´s task is not only the manipulation of each agent but also achievement of the top goal that is assigned to the entire team of humans and agents. A main goal of this study is development of a design concept based on ecological interface design (EID) for human supervision of a robot team, providing information about states of functions that are necessary to achieve the top goal of a human-robot system. This paper describes an experimental study conducted to discuss a method of information selection for the proposed human-robot interface design concept. An experimental test-bed simulation was used in this study. Usage and importance of functional indications with different levels of abstraction were analyzed under two typical tasks in which the goals and cognitive workloads were different. The results demonstrate that the usage and importance of functional indications depend on types of tasks and operator´s strategies, and that a method of information selection can be developed based on the data about the usage and importance.