This study investigated the navigational approaches used by humans when operating a simple tele-robot in a simulated search and rescue operation. Tele-robots are being increasingly used in safety-critical operations. During tele-operation, the situational awareness of tele-robot operators needs to be supported. Navigation depends on psychological skills of perception and cognition, and can utlize different problem solving strategies. However, there is limited knowledge of how operators develop situational awareness while navigating tele-robots. The study was conducted to understand if there were distinctive, identifiable strategies in the way operators navigated. When participants manually tele-operated a robot in a remote physical environment, two distinct navigation strategies were found (labeled driver method and searcher method). The result of this work can be used to inform the design of human-centric tele-robot navigational algorithms that can support a variety of human navigation strategies.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BurkeJ. L.MurphyR. R.CoovertM. D.RiddleD. L. (2004). Moonlight in Miami: Field study of human-robot interaction in the context of an urban search and rescue disaster response training exercise. Human–Computer Interaction, 19(1-2), 85–116
2.
CasperJ.MurphyR. (2002). Workflow study on human-robot interaction in USAR. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2, 1997-2003.
3.
ChienS. Y.WangH.LewisM. (2010). Human vs. algorithmic path planning for search and rescue by robot teams. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 54(4), 379–383.
4.
LinChin-TengHuangTeng-YiLinWen-JingChangShu-YenLinYin-HungKoLi-WeiHungDaisy L.ChangErik C., Gender differences in wayfinding in virtual environments with global or local landmarks, Journal of Environmental Psychology, Volume 32, Issue 2, June2012, Pages 89-96.
5.
CrandallJ. W.GoodrichM. A. (2002). Characterizing efficiency of human robot interaction: A case study of shared-control tele-operation. Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2002. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on, 2, 1290–1295vol. 2.
6.
DownsR.J.SteaD. (1973). Cognitive Maps and Spatial Behavio", Image and Environment, 8-26.
7.
EndsleyM. R. (1988). Design and evaluation for situation awareness enhancement. In Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 32nd Annual Meeting (pp. 97–101). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors Society.
8.
EndsleyM.R. (1988a). Situational awareness global assessment technique, (SAGAT) In: Proceedings of the National Aerospace and Electronics Conference (NAECON) (pp. 789-795). New York: IEEE. 29
9.
Gonzalez-BanosH.H.LatombeJ.C. (2002). Navigation Strategies for Exploring Indoor Environments, International Journal of Robotics Research, 21(10-11), 829-848.
10.
GoodrichM.OlsenD.CrandallJ.PalmerT. (2001). Experiments in Adjustable Autonomy. IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 3, 1624–1629.
11.
HalpernD. F. (2000). Sex differences in cognitive abilities (3rd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
12.
HartS. G.StavelandL. E. (1988). Development of a multi-dimensional workload rating scale: Results of empirical and theoretical research. In HancockP. A.MeshkatiN. (Eds.), Human mental workload, 139-183.
13.
HughesS.LewisM. (2004). Robotic camera control for remote exploration. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 511–517.
14.
JacoffA.WeissB.MessinaE. (2003). Evolution of a Performance Metric for Urban Search and Rescue Robots. In Proceedings of the 2003 Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems Workshop. 2003.
15.
KitanoH.TadokoroS.NodaI.MatsubaraH.TakahashiT.ShinjouA.ShimadaS. (1999). Robocup rescue: Search and rescue in large-scale disasters as a domain for autonomous agents research. Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 1999. IEEE SMC’99 Conference Proceedings. 1999 IEEE International Conference on, 6, 739–743vol. 6.
16.
KleinerA.BrennerM.BräuerT.DornhegeC. (2006). Successful Search and Rescue in Simulated Disaster Areas. RoboCup2005: Robot
17.
LawtonC. A. (1994). Gender differences in way-finding strategies: Relationship to spatial ability and spatial anxiety. Sex Roles, 30, 765–779.
18.
LawtonC. A. (1996). Strategies for indoor wayfinding: The role of orientation. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 16, 137–145.
19.
LawtonC. A.KallaiJ. (2002). Gender Differences in Wayfinding Strategies and Anxiety About Wayfinding: A Cross-Cultural Comparison. Sex Roles, 47, 389-401.
20.
LewisM.SycaraK.NourbakhshI. (2003). Developing a testbed for studying human-robot interaction in urban search and rescue. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction (HCII’03), 22–27.
21.
MeilingerT.KnauffM.BülthoffH. H. (2008), Working Memory in Wayfinding—A Dual Task Experiment in a Virtual City. Cognitive Science, 32: 755–770.
22.
MontelloD. R.SasC. (2006). Human factors of wayfinding in navigation. In KarwowskiW.(Ed.) International encyclopedia of ergonomics and human factors, 2nd ed. pp. 2003-2008. London: CRC Press: Taylor and Francis, Ltd.
23.
MurphyR. R.CasperJ. (2002). Human-robot interactions during the robot-assisted urban search and rescue response at the World Trade Center. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 33(3), 367–385. doi:10.1109/TSMCB.2003.811794
24.
RuangpayoongsakN.RothH.ChudobaJ. (2005). Mobile robots for search and rescue. Safety, Security and Rescue Robotics, Workshop, 2005IEEE International, 212–217.
25.
TaylorR. M. (1990). Evaluation of the Situational Awareness Rating Technique (SART) as a tool for aircrew systems design. AGARD, Situational Awareness in Aerospace Operations 8 p (SEE N90-28972 23-53).
26.
ThorndykeP. W., “Performance models for spatial and locational cognition,” Rand, Washington, DC., Tech. Rep. R-2676-ONR, 1980.
27.
WangH.ChienS. Y.LewisM.VelagapudiP.ScerriP.SycaraK. (2009). Human teams for large scale multirobot control (pp. 1269–1274). Presented at the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics - SMC, IEEE. doi:10.1109/ICSMC.2009.5345912
28.
WorrallK. (2008). Guidance and search algorithms for mobile robots: application and analysis within the context of urban search and rescue. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.
29.
YancoH. A.DruryJ. (2004). “Where am I?” Acquiring situation awareness using a remote robot platform (vol. 3, pp. 2835–2840). Presented at the 2004 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37583), IEEE. doi:10.1109/ICSMC.2004.1400762
