Title :
On using mixed-initiative control: A perspective for managing large-scale robotic teams
Author :
Hardin, Benjamin ; Goodrich, Michael A.
Author_Institution :
Comput. Sci. Dept., Brigham Young Univ., Provo, UT, USA
Abstract :
Prior work suggests that the potential benefits of mixed initiative management of multiple robots are mitigated by situational factors, including workload and operator expertise. In this paper, we present an experiment where allowing a supervisor and group of searchers to jointly decide the correct level of autonomy for a given situation (“mixed initiative”) results in better overall performance than giving an agent exclusive control over their level of autonomy (“adaptive autonomy”) or giving a supervisor exclusive control over the agent´s level of autonomy (“adjustable autonomy”), regardless of the supervisor´s expertise or workload. In light of prior work, we identify two elements of our experiment that appear to be requirements for effective mixed initiative control of large-scale robotic teams: (a) Agents must be capable of making progress toward a goal without having to wait for human input in most circumstances. (b) The operator control interface must help the human to rapidly understand and modify the progress and intent of several agents.
Keywords :
multi-robot systems; user interfaces; agent autonomy level; agent exclusive control; large-scale robotic team management; mixed-initiative control; operator control interface; operator expertise; supervisor exclusive control; workload; Biological system modeling; Humans; Measurement; Robot kinematics; Search problems; Switches; Adaptive Autonomy; Adjustable Autonomy; Human-Robot Interaction; Mixed Initiative; Unmanned Vehicles; User Study;
Conference_Titel :
Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2009 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on
Conference_Location :
La Jolla, CA
Print_ISBN :
978-1-60558-404-1