Adaptability and Flexibility are Key! Benefits of the “Playbook” Interface for Human Supervision of Multiple Unmanned Vehicles

There is increasing empirical evidence supporting the “Playbook” interface as an effective method for controlling multiple unmanned vehicles (UVs). To better understand the benefits provided by a flexible Playbook interface, participants controlled either four or eight robots in a simulated UV mission with different forms of restricted or flexible Playbook interfaces in the Roboflag environment. Level of abstraction (robot behavior) and level of aggregation (unit of robot selection) were manipulated to yield different restricted or flexible interfaces. The results confirmed the benefits provided by a flexible Playbook interface in which operators are empowered to delegate (or not) tasks to automated agents, compared to less flexible interfaces which are susceptible to negative effects due to suboptimal automation or unexpected events.