Function-Based Interface for Task Delegation in Human Supervision of an Agent Team

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When supervising a team of robots, the operator's task is not only the manipulation of each robot but also achievement of the top goal that is assigned to the entire team of humans and robots. It is crucial to support human operators to enable them to understand the overall progress in the work and the situation via a system-centered view. 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.1. A probabilistic simulationA probabilistic simulation method was developed to estimate behaviors of human operators as a tool for evaluating human-robot interfaces for operation of multiple robots. Through its application, advantages and costs of different design alternatives has been investigated in terms of cognitive workload indexes of the human operators.2. Function-based human-robot interfaceAn experimental study was conducted to reveal basic efficacy using an experimental test-bed simulation. Information on function is identified using the Abstraction-Decomposition Space, which is a framework for representing the functional structures of work in a human-machine system. The information about a human-robot team work was implemented into an interface display using the EID concept as the basic framework.The results of the statistical data analysis cannot reveal the efficacy of the interface design, except the effect on a performance factor for operator's offensive task. However, the findings of the strategies and subjective evaluations of the usefulness of the modified interface suggest that the proposed interface design may have the ability to provide effective human supervision of multiple autonomous robots. It is also suggested that the need for a functional display closely depends on the strategies actually used during operations.