Providing the Right Amount of Detail: Implications for Map and Icon Display in a Robotic Search Task

Abstract

An experiment was constructed to provide guidance regarding how much information should be displayed to operators performing remote robotic tasks. Display features were designed to address some of the challenges facing robotic operators – reconciling views from different sources, understanding teammate location and orientation, and maintaining spatial awareness of the unmanned vehicle location in relation to mission-relevant landmarks. We added information about orientation and history to teammate position icons and tested their usefulness. In addition, we tested the usefulness of two different types of maps: a detailed satellite map and a more traditional block map. We found that the simple block map better supported performance in this context and that adding information to the position icon did not aid performance. Implications and rationale are discussed.

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