Towards human control of robot swarms

In this paper we investigate principles of swarm control that enable a human operator to exert influence on and control large swarms of robots. We present two principles, coined selection and beacon control, that differ with respect to their temporal and spatial persistence. The former requires active selection of groups of robots while the latter exerts a passive influence on nearby robots. Both principles are implemented in a testbed in which operators exert influence on a robot swarm by switching between a set of behaviors ranging from trivial behaviors up to distributed autonomous algorithms. Performance is tested in a series of complex foraging tasks in environments with different obstacles ranging from open to cluttered and structured. The robotic swarm has only local communication and sensing capabilities with the number of robots ranging from 50 to 200. Experiments with human operators utilizing either selection or beacon control are compared with each other and to a simple autonomous swarm with regard to performance, adaptation to complex environments, and scalability to larger swarms. Our results show superior performance of autonomous swarms in open environments, of selection control in complex environments, and indicate a potential for scaling beacon control to larger swarms

Human Swarm Interaction: An Experimental Study of Two Types of Interaction with Foraging Swarms

In this paper we present the first study of human-swarm interaction comparing two fundamental types of interaction, coined intermittent and environmental. These types are exemplified by two control methods, selection and beacon control, made available to a human operator to control a foraging swarm of robots. Selection and beacon control differ with respect to their temporal and spatial influence on the swarm and enable an operator to generate different strategies from the basic behaviors of the swarm. Selection control requires an active selection of groups of robots while beacon control exerts an influence on nearby robots within a set range. Both control methods are implemented in a testbed in which operators solve an information foraging problem by utilizing a set of swarm behaviors. The robotic swarm has only local communication and sensing capabilities. The number of robots in the swarm range from 50 to 200. Operator performance for each control method is compared in a series of missions in different environments with no obstacles up to cluttered and structured obstacles. In addition, performance is compared to simple and advanced autonomous swarms. Thirty-two participants were recruited for participation in the study. Autonomous swarm algorithms were tested in repeated simulations. Our results showed that selection control scales better to larger swarms and generally outperforms beacon control. Operators utilized different swarm behaviors with different frequency across control methods, suggesting an adaptation to different strategies induced by choice of control method. Simple autonomous swarms outperformed human operators in open environments, but operators adapted better to complex environments with obstacles. Human controlled swarms fell short of task-specific benchmarks under all conditions. Our results reinforce the importance of understanding and choosing appropriate types of human-swarm interaction when designing swarm systems, in addition to choosing appropriate swarm behaviors

Connectivity Differences between Human Operators of Swarms and Bandwidth Limitations

Human interaction with robot swarms (HSI) is a young field with very few user studies that explore operator behavior. All these studies assume perfect communication between the operator and the swarm. A key challenge in the use of swarm robotic systems in human supervised tasks is to understand human swarm interaction in the presence of limited communication bandwidth, which is a constraint arising in many practical scenarios. In this paper, we present results of human-subject experiments designed to study the effect of bandwidth limitations in human swarm interaction. We consider three levels of bandwidth availability in a swarm foraging task. The lowest bandwidth condition performs poorly, but the medium and high bandwidth condition both perform well. In the medium bandwidth condition, we display useful aggregated swarm information (like swarm centroid and spread) to compress the swarm state information. We also observe interesting operator behavior and adaptation of operators' swarm reaction

Access to the Civil Court System for Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse in Georgia: Observations and Recommendations from the Clinical Legal Education Experience

Founded in January 2016, the Wilbanks Child Endangerment and Sexual Exploitation Clinic (the CEASE Clinic) represents survivors of child sexual abuse in juvenile court dependency matters and civil litigation and is the first of its kind in the nation. The CEASE Clinic was established through a generous donation by Georgia Law alumnus Marlan Wilbanks (JD ‘84) in response to a new Georgia law known as the Hidden Predator Act (the HPA) that went into effect on July 1, 2015. The HPA extended the statute of limitations for civil claims arising out of acts of child sexual abuse by providing a two-year retroactive window under which survivors who were previously barred from filing lawsuits could bring claims against their abusers. The CEASE Clinic’s mission is to provide direct legal services to survivors of child sexual abuse in a supportive, professional environment as well as to educate and prepare the next generation of lawyers and social workers to represent survivors. The clinic not only provides direct representation to survivors, but it also serves as a teaching center as part of the University of Georgia School of Law

Access to the Civil Court System for Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse in Georgia: Observations and Recommendations from the Clinical Legal Education Experience

Founded in January 2016, the Wilbanks Child Endangerment and Sexual Exploitation Clinic (the CEASE Clinic) represents survivors of child sexual abuse in juvenile court dependency matters and civil litigation and is the first of its kind in the nation. The CEASE Clinic was established through a generous donation by Georgia Law alumnus Marlan Wilbanks (JD ‘84) in response to a new Georgia law known as the Hidden Predator Act (the HPA) that went into effect on July 1, 2015. The HPA extended the statute of limitations for civil claims arising out of acts of child sexual abuse by providing a two-year retroactive window under which survivors who were previously barred from filing lawsuits could bring claims against their abusers. The CEASE Clinic’s mission is to provide direct legal services to survivors of child sexual abuse in a supportive, professional environment as well as to educate and prepare the next generation of lawyers and social workers to represent survivors. The clinic not only provides direct representation to survivors, but it also serves as a teaching center as part of the University of Georgia School of Law

Using Coverage for Measuring the Effect of Haptic Feedback in Human Robotic Swarm Interaction

A robotic swarm is a decentralized group of robots which overcome failure of individual robots with robust emergent behaviors based on local interactions. These behaviors are not well built for accomplishing complex tasks, however, because of the changing assumptions required in various applications and environments. A new movement in the research field is to add human input to influence the swarm in order to help make the robots goal directed and overcome these problems. This research in Human Swarm Interaction (HSI) focuses on different control laws and ways to integrate the human intent with local control laws of the robots. Previous studies have all used visual feedback through a computer interface to give the user the swarm state information. This study adapted swarm control algorithms to give the operator hap tic feedback as well as visual feedback. The study shows the benefits of the additional feedback in a target searching class. Researchers in multi-robot systems have shown benefits of hap tic feedback in obstacle navigation before, but this study is a novel method because of the decentralized formation of the robotic swarm. In most environments, operators were able to cover significantly more area, increasing the chance of finding more targets. The other environment found no significant difference, showing that the hap tic feedback does not degrade performance in any of the tested environments. This supports our hypothesis that hap tic feedback is useful in HSI and requires further research to maximize its potential

Using haptic feedback in human swarm interaction

A swarm of robots is a large group of individual agents that autonomously coordinate via local control laws. Their emergent behavior allows simple robots to accomplish complex tasks. Since missions may have complex objectives that change dynamically due to environmental and mission changes, human control and influence over the swarm is needed. The field of Human Swarm Interaction (HSI) is young, with few user studies, and even fewer papers focusing on giving non-visual feedback to the operator. The authors will herein present a background of haptics in robotics and swarms and two studies that explore various conditions under which haptic feedback may be useful in HSI. The overall goal of the studies is to explore the effectiveness of haptic feedback in the presence of other visual stimuli about the swarm system. The findings show that giving feedback about nearby obstacles using a haptic device can improve performance, and that a combination of feedback from obstacle forces via the visual and haptic channels provide the best performance

Robotic swarm connectivity with human operation and bandwidth limitations

Human interaction with robot swarms (HSI) is a young field with very few user studies that explore operator behavior. All these studies assume perfect communication between the operator and the swarm. A key challenge in the use of swarm robotic systems in human supervised tasks is to understand human swarm interaction in the presence of limited communication bandwidth, which is a constraint arising in many practical scenarios. In this paper, we present results of human-subject experiments designed to study the effect of bandwidth limitations in human swarm interaction. We consider three levels of bandwidth availability in a swarm foraging task. The lowest bandwidth condition performs poorly, but the medium and high bandwidth condition both perform well. In the medium bandwidth condition, we display useful aggregated swarm information (like swarm centroid and spread) to compress the swarm state information. We also observe interesting operator behavior and adaptation of operators' swarm reaction

Investigating neglect benevolence and communication latency during human-swarm interaction

In practical applications of robot swarms with bioinspired behaviors, a human operator will need to exert control over the swarm to fulfill the mission objectives. In many operational settings, human operators are remotely located and the communication environment is harsh. Hence, there exists some latency in information (or control command) transfer between the human and the swarm. In this paper, we conduct experiments of human-swarm interaction to investigate the effects of communication latency on the performance of a humanswarm system in a swarm foraging task.We develop and investigate the concept of neglect benevolence, where a human operator allows the swarm to evolve on its own and stabilize before giving new commands. Our experimental results indicate that operators exploited neglect benevolence in different ways to develop successful strategies in the foraging task. Furthermore, we show experimentally that the use of a predictive display can help mitigate the adverse effects of communication latency

Statute of Limitations for Child Sexual Abuse Civil Lawsuits in Georgia

Only 29% of child sexual abuse reports result in criminal charges being filed. As a result, most states have enacted civil statutes of limitations to allow survivors to file claims both against abusers and also those who owed them a duty of care and knew or should have known about the abuse. In 2015 the Georgia legislature passed the Hidden Predator Act (HPA) to amend the state’s civil statute of limitations. Under the HPA, survivors of child sexual abuse that occurred prior to July 1, 2015 were given a two-year retroactive window under which to file claims against their abusers. Notably, the open window excluded entities from liability. After the two-year window closed on June 30, 2017, survivors whose abuse occurred prior to July 1, 2015 could only sue until their twenty-third birthday. For those whose abuse occurred after July 1, 2015, the HPA created a delayed-discovery provision, allowing survivors over the age of twenty-three to file claims within two years of making the connection that the abuse caused their injuries. The Wilbanks Child Endangerment and Sexual Exploitation Clinic (“CEASE”) filed six claims under the open window provision of the HPA. Four of those claims have been successfully settled, one was decided favorably for the victim at a bench trial, and one was voluntarily dismissed by the client. Through its representation of survivors, CEASE found that even in cases where the abuse occurred thirty years prior to the date of filing, claims could be successful under Georgia law and that mediation could be a powerful healing tool for survivors. However, despite the passage of the HPA, CEASE observed several barriers for survivors to the civil justice system in Georgia. While the HPA, in theory, provided civil relief for survivors, in practice, the HPA did little to extend the statute of limitations or provide retroactive access to the civil justice system. Fewer than fifteen civil claims were filed under the retroactive window, six of which were filed by CEASE. Of the nearly 1,000,000 survivors of child sexual abuse in the state of Georgia, less than 0.000015% were able to file civil claims under the open window. Furthermore, because the delayed-discovery provision only applies to acts of child sexual abuse occurring on or after July 1, 2015 and where the victim is over the age of twenty-three, no delayed-discovery cases will be seen in Georgia courts for decades