Extreme work teams: using SWAT teams as a model for coordinating distributed robots

We present a field study of police SWAT teams for the purpose of enabling grounded design of a system to coordinate distributed field robots. The mission-oriented, spatially distributed SWAT environment provides a rich resource for robotics designers that mirrors field robot deployments in key ways. We highlight the processes with which SWAT team leaders create and maintain common ground among team members and coordinate action in these tightly-coupled, distributed teams. We present a system for coordinating distributed robots that we designed based on our SWAT team observations.

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