Human-Agent Teaming for Multirobot Control: A Review of Human Factors Issues

The human factors literature on intelligent systems was reviewed in relation to the following: efficient human supervision of multiple robots, appropriate human trust in the automated systems, maintenance of human operator's situation awareness, individual differences in human-agent (H-A) interaction, and retention of human decision authority. A number of approaches-from flexible automation to autonomous agents-were reviewed, and their advantages and disadvantages were discussed. In addition, two key human performance issues (trust and situation awareness) related to H-A teaming for multirobot control and some promising user interface design solutions to address these issues were discussed. Some major individual differences factors (operator spatial ability, attentional control ability, and gaming experience) were identified that may impact H-A teaming in the context of robotics control.