The Impact of Human–Automation Collaboration in Decentralized Multiple Unmanned Vehicle Control

For future systems that require one or a small team of operators to supervise a network of automated agents, automated planners are critical since they are faster than humans for path planning and resource allocation in multivariate, dynamic, time-pressured environments. However, such planners can be brittle and unable to respond to emergent events. Human operators can aid such systems by bringing their knowledge-based reasoning and experience to bear. Given a decentralized task planner and a goal-based operator interface for a network of unmanned vehicles in a search, track, and neutralize mission, we demonstrate with a human-on-the-loop experiment that humans guiding these decentralized planners improved system performance by up to 50%. However, those tasks that required precise and rapid calculations were not significantly improved with human aid. Thus, there is a shared space in such complex missions for human-automation collaboration.

[1]  François Legras,et al.  Autonomy Spectrum and Performance Perception Issues in Swarm Supervisory Control , 2012, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[2]  Han-Lim Choi,et al.  Consensus-Based Decentralized Auctions for Robust Task Allocation , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

[3]  Marios M. Polycarpou,et al.  Cooperative real-time search and task allocation in UAV teams , 2003, 42nd IEEE International Conference on Decision and Control (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37475).

[4]  Mary L. Cummings,et al.  Predicting Controller Capacity in Supervisory Control of Multiple UAVs , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics - Part A: Systems and Humans.

[5]  Mary L. Cummings,et al.  The Role of Human-Automation Consensus in Multiple Unmanned Vehicle Scheduling , 2010, Hum. Factors.

[6]  Debasish Ghose,et al.  Multi-agent Search using Voronoi partitions , 2007 .

[7]  Mary L. Cummings,et al.  Operator Performance and Intelligent Aiding in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Scheduling , 2007, IEEE Intelligent Systems.

[8]  Hugh F. Durrant-Whyte,et al.  Optimal Search for a Lost Target in a Bayesian World , 2003, FSR.

[9]  E. Gilder,et al.  The Authors , 1977 .

[10]  Joe Marks,et al.  Human-guided search , 2010, J. Heuristics.

[11]  Christopher D. Wickens,et al.  Mission Control of Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: A Workload Analysis , 2005, Hum. Factors.

[12]  S S Stevens,et al.  HUMAN ENGINEERING FOR AN EFFECTIVE AIR-NAVIGATION AND TRAFFIC-CONTROL SYSTEM, AND APPENDIXES 1 THRU 3 , 1951 .

[13]  Carlo Alberto Avizzano,et al.  Human-Robot Interactions in Future Military Operations , 2011 .

[14]  Ilan Kroo,et al.  Control of Multiple UAVs for Persistent Surveillance: Algorithm Description and Hardware Demonstration , 2009 .

[15]  M. Alighanbari,et al.  Decentralized Task Assignment for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles , 2005, Proceedings of the 44th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.

[16]  Mary L. Cummings,et al.  Automation Architecture for Single Operator, Multiple UAV Command and Control, , 2007 .

[17]  Barry G. Silverman.  Human-Computer Collaboration , 1992, Hum. Comput. Interact..

[18]  Timothy A. Salthouse,et al.  Decision Making and Problem Solving , 1982 .

[19]  E. Reed.  The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception , 1989 .

[20]  J. Karl Hedrick,et al.  A multiple UAV system for vision-based search and localization , 2008, 2008 American Control Conference.

[21]  Diana Schmidt.  A Queuing Analysis of the Air Traffic Controller''s Workload , 1978 .

[22]  Michael D. Matthews,et al.  Neurocognitive and Physiological Factors During High-Tempo Operations , 2012 .

[23]  A. Ollero,et al.  Multiple UAV cooperative searching operation using polygon area decomposition and efficient coverage algorithms , 2004, DARS.

[24]  Edsger W. Dijkstra,et al.  A note on two problems in connexion with graphs , 1959, Numerische Mathematik.

[25]  Marios M. Polycarpou,et al.  COOPERATIVE PATH-PLANNING FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES USING DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING , 2002 .

[26]  Jonathan P. How,et al.  Increasing autonomy of UAVs , 2009, IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine.

[27]  W. Marsden.  I and J , 2012 .

[28]  Philip J. Smith,et al.  Brittleness in the design of cooperative problem-solving systems: the effects on user performance , 1997, IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. Part A.