Human Factors in the Scalability of Multirobot Operation: A Review and Simulation

Scalable systems can increase or decrease their size with costs that are proportionate to the resulting change in performance. These costs can be monetary or related to other factors such as integration effort, operator training, or infrastructure upgrades. The options to increase in size to meet growing demand and decrease in size to minimize costs while servicing low demand make scalable systems attractive for completing tasks under uncertainty. Multirobot systems are used in many tasks characterized by uncertainty, such as search and rescue, mapping, and perimeter defense. When human operators interact with multirobot systems, the scalability can be limited by the human’s cognitive abilities, decision making speed, and performance under stress. Human problem solving and creativity can also be beneficial to the system to overcome potential scaling challenges. This paper summarizes the literature on humans’ effects on scalability of multirobot systems and presents an illustrative simulation of the challenges of scaling a multioperator, multirobot surveillance system.