Multi-Robot User Interface Modeling

This paper investigates the problem of user interface design and evaluation for autonomous teams of heterogeneous mobile robots. We explore an operator modeling approach to multi-robot user interface evaluation. Specifically the authors generated GOMS models, a type of user model, to investigate potential interface problems and to guide the interface development process. Results indicate that our interface design changes improve the usability of multi-robot mission generation substantially. We conclude that modeling techniques such as GOMS can play an important role in robotic interface development. Moreover, this research indicates that these techniques can be performed in an inexpensive and timely manner, potentially reducing the need for costly and demanding usability studies

Usability Evaluation of an Automated Mission Repair Mechanism for Mobile Robot Mission Specification

This paper describes a usability study designed to assess ease of use, user satisfaction, and performance of a mobile robot mission specification system. The software under consideration, MissionLab, allows users to specify a robot mission as well as compile it, execute it, and control the robot in real-time. In this work, a new automated mission repair mechanism that aids users in correcting faulty missions was added to the system. This mechanism was compared to an older version in order to better inform the development process, and set a direction for future improvements in usability

Viewfinder: final activity report

The VIEW-FINDER project (2006-2009) is an 'Advanced Robotics' project that seeks to apply a semi-autonomous robotic system to inspect ground safety in the event of a fire. Its primary aim is to gather data (visual and chemical) in order to assist rescue personnel. A base station combines the gathered information with information retrieved from off-site sources. The project addresses key issues related to map building and reconstruction, interfacing local command information with external sources, human-robot interfaces and semi-autonomous robot navigation. The VIEW-FINDER system is a semi-autonomous; the individual robot-sensors operate autonomously within the limits of the task assigned to them, that is, they will autonomously navigate through and inspect an area. Human operators monitor their operations and send high level task requests as well as low level commands through the interface to any nodes in the entire system. The human interface has to ensure the human supervisor and human interveners are provided a reduced but good and relevant overview of the ground and the robots and human rescue workers therein

Learning to Role-Switch in Multi-Robot Systems

We present an approach that uses Q-learning on individual robotic agents, for coordinating a mission-tasked team of robots in a complex scenario. To reduce the size of the state space, actions are grouped into sets of related behaviors called roles and represented as behavioral assemblages. A role is a Finite State Automata such as Forager, where the behaviors and their sequencing for finding objects, collecting them, and returning them are already encoded and do not have to be relearned. Each robot starts out with the same set of possible roles to play, the same perceptual hardware for coordination, and no contact other than perception regarding other members of the team. Over the course of training, a team of Q-learning robots will converge to solutions that best the performance of a well-designed handcrafted homogeneous team

Desenvolvimento da estação de terra do projeto AURORA

Orientador : Marcel BergermanDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de ComputaçãoResumo: Esta dissertação apresenta o desenvolvimento da estação de terra do Projeto AURORA (Autonomous Unmanned Remote MQnitoring Robotic Airship). O objetivo do Projeto AURORA é o desenvolvimento de veículos robóticos aéreos para inspeção aérea, evoluindo de veículos puramente tele-operados para veículos telemonitorados. O protótipo da primeira fase, AURORA I, tem como finalidade a demonstração da viabilidade do projeto e a realização de missões de baixa complexidade. Esta dissertação abrange o projeto e implementação do hardware e sojtware utilizados pelo operador em terra para monitorar e controlar o vôo do dirigível. São apresentados os diversos componentes da interface com o usuário da estação de terra, o sistema utilizado para a comunicação entre a estação de terra e o sistema embarcado, e o software utilizado para se atender aos requisitos de tempo real. Adicionalmente, é apresentada a definição do sistema operacional utilizado na estação de terra e no sistema embarcado do Projeto AURORA. A estação de terra desenvolvida está sendo utilizada no Projeto AURORA, permitindo a monitoração e o envio de comandos para o dirigível em vôos reais e simulados, e fornecendo suporte para o desenvolvimento dos algoritmos de controle e do sistema embarcado do Projeto AURORAAbstract: This dissertation shows the deveIopment of the AURORA Project's Ground Station (AURORA stands for Autonomous Unmanned Remote MQnitoring Robotic Airship). The AURORA Project aims the developement of aerial robotic vehicles to perform aerial inspection, evolving from purely teIe-operated vehicles to tele-monitored ones. The first phase prototype, AURORA l, airns to demostrate the project's viability and to accomplish low complexity missions. This dissertation presents the design and impIementation of the hardware and software used by the ground operator to monitor and control the airship flight. lt shows the various components of the useI' interface in the ground station, the communication system between the ground station and the embedded system, and the software developed to attend the real time requisites. Additionaly, it presents the definition of the operational system to be used in the Project AURORA's ground station and embedded system. The Project AURORA team is already using the developed ground station in actual and simulated flights to allow flight monitoring and to send commands to the vehicle, providing suport for the deveIopment af the controI algarithms and the embedded systemMestradoMestre em Ciência da Computaçã

Evaluating the Usability of Robot Programming Toolsets

The days of specifying missions for mobile robots using traditional programming languages such as C++ and LISP are coming to an end. The need to support operators lacking programming skills coupled with the increasing diversity of robot run-time operating systems is moving the field towards high-level robot programming toolsets which allow graphical mission specification. This paper explores the issues of evaluating such toolsets as to their usability. This article first examines how usability criteria are established and performance target values chosen. The methods by which suitable experiments are created to gather data relevant to the usability criteria are then presented. Finally, methods to analyze the data gathered to establish values for the usability criteria are discussed. The MissionLab toolset is used as a concrete example throughout the article to ground the discussions, but the methods and techniques are generalizable to many such systems