Autonomous swarms of robots can bring robustness, scalability and adaptability to safety-critical tasks such as search and rescue but their application is still very limited. Using semi-autonomous swarms with human control can bring robot swarms to real-world applications. Human operators can define goals for the swarm, monitor their performance and interfere with, or overrule, the decisions and behaviour. We present the ``Human And Robot Interactive Swarm'' simulator (HARIS) that allows multi-user interaction with a robot swarm and facilitates qualitative and quantitative user studies through simulation of robot swarms completing tasks, from package delivery to search and rescue, with varying levels of human control. In this demonstration, we showcase the simulator by using it to study the performance gain offered by maintaining a ``human-in-the-loop'' over a fully autonomous system as an example. This is illustrated in the context of search and rescue, with an autonomous allocation of resources to those in need.
翻译:自主机器人群体能够为搜索和救援等安全关键任务带来稳健性、可伸缩性和适应性,但它们的应用仍然非常有限。使用半自主机器人群体配合人类控制,可以将机器人群体带入现实世界的应用领域。人类操作员可以为群体定义目标、监控它们的表现并干预或否决它们的决策和行为。我们介绍了“人-机交互群体'' 模拟器(HARIS),它允许多用户与机器人群体交互,并通过模拟机器人群体完成任务来实现定性和定量用户研究,从包裹交付到搜索和救援,人类控制度的不同水平。在这个演示中,我们展示了该模拟器,通过搜索和救援的例子,研究了维持“人在圈内”比完全自治系统所提供的绩效增益。