Human Robot Coordination: Panel Overview

Abstract

In recent years, accelerating maturation of robotics technologies, such as machine perception and intelligent control technologies have led to a widening knowledge and experiential base serving as a springboard for expanded research.

This maturation has led to increased engineering reliability, opening the way for more tractable human-robot research. The technology area from which a good deal of this work can draw inspiration and guidance is humans in automation (Parasuraman, Sheridan and Wickens, 2000), which lets us examine issues including air traffic controllers' multi-tracking or pilots' multi-tasking operations under conditions of time and other stressors. Among the issues the panelists will address are: How will human-robot teams dynamically reconfigure or gracefully degrade as assets are lost? How can people and robots make judgments of the robots ability to traverse or climb broken terrain? How can people manage multiple robots? How can robots and people build a shared awareness of the remote environment? What metrics will capture human-robot teamwork? Overall, human-robot team work is a new frontier for Human Factors.