Human Swarm Interaction

Swarm robotic systems consist of a large collection of simple robots with limited sensing, communication, actuation, and computational capabilities. Robots in a swarm robotic system act according to simple local rules and exhibit a wide range of behaviors without any centralized controller. However, because of their inherent simplicity it is difficult to deploy them for complex missions. To use swarm robotic systems in a complex mission, presence of human operators are required to guide the behaviors of the swarm towards accomplishing mission goals. Two key challenges in human swarm interaction is that (a) the state information of the robot available to the human may not be accurate and (b) there may be a mismatch between the intent of the operator and the robots understanding of the human intent. The error in the swarm state available to the human and the intent mismatch can happen due to bandwidth limitations and/or latency in communication and localization error of individual robots. The research goal here is to understand the effect of these errors on the human-swarm system performance and investigate methods to mitigate the effects of the errors.

Related Publications

    1. A. Kolling, P. Walker, N.Chakraborty, M. Lewis, and K. Sycara, ``Human Interaction with Robot Swarms: A Survey", IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems, Vol. 46, No. 1, pp. 9 - 26, February 2016.

    2. M. Lewkowicz, R. Agarwal, and N. Chakraborty, “Distributed Algorithm for Selecting Leaders for Supervisory Robotic Swarm Control”, IEEE International Symposium on Multi-Robot and Multi-Agent Systems, Rutgers, NJ, August 2019.

    3. S. Nagavalli, N. Chakraborty, and K. Sycara, ``On Time-Optimal Behavior Scheduling of Robotic Swarms for Achieving Multiple Goals'', IEEE International Conference on Automation Sciences and Engineering (CASE), Xi'an, China, August, 2017.

    4. S. Nagavalli, N. Chakraborty, and K. Sycara, ``Automated Sequencing of Swarm Behaviors for Supervisory Control of Robotic Swarms'', IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Singapore, May, 2017.

    5. W. Luo, S. S. Khatib, S. Nagavalli, N. Chakraborty, and K. Sycara, ``Distributed Knowledge Leader Selection for Multi-Robot Environmental Sampling Under Bandwidth Constraints", International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Daejeon, S. Korea, October, 2016.

    6. A. Li, W. Luo, S. Nagavalli, N. Chakraborty, and K. Sycara, ``Handling State Uncertainty in Distributed Information Leader Selection for Robotic Swarms", International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Budapest, Hungary, October, 2016.

    7. W. Luo, S. S. Khatib, S. Nagavalli, N. Chakraborty, and K. Sycara, ``Asynchronous Distributed Information Leader Selection in Robotic Swarms'', IEEE International Conference on Automation Sciences and Engineering (IEEE CASE), Gothenburg, Sweden, August 2015.

    8. S. Nagavalli, S.-Y. Chien, M. Lewis, N. Chakraborty, and K. Sycara, ``Bounds of Neglect Benevolence in Input Timing for Human Interaction with Robotic Swarms”, In Proceedings of the Tenth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '15), Portland, OR, USA, pp.197-204, March 2015.

    9. P. Walker, S. A. Amraii, M. Lewis, N. Chakraborty, and K. Sycara, ``Control of Swarms with Multiple Leader Agents'', International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, San Diego CA, October, 2014.

    10. R. Luo, N. Chakraborty, and K. Sycara, ``Supervisory Control for Cost-Effective Redistribution of Robotic Swarms'', International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, San Diego CA, (Finalist for Best Student Paper Award), October, 2014.

    11. P. Walker, S. A. Amraii, N. Chakraborty, M. Lewis, and K. Sycara, ``Human Control of Robot Swarms with Dynamic Leaders'', International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Chicago, September, 2014.

    12. P. Walker, S. Nunnally, M. Lewis, N. Chakraborty, and K. Sycara, ``Levels of Automation for Human Influence of Robot Swarms'', HFES, San Diego, CA (Best Paper Award), September, 2014.

    13. S. A. Amraii, P. Walker, M. Lewis, N. Chakraborty, and K. Sycara, ``Explicit vs. Tacit Leadership in Influencing the Behavior of Swarms'', IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Hong Kong, China, June, 2014.

    14. S. Nagavalli, L. Luo, N. Chakraborty, and K. Sycara, ``Neglect Benevolence in Human Control of Robotic Swarms'', International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Hong Kong, China, June, 2014.

    15. S. Nunnally, P. Walker, M. Lewis, N. Chakraborty, and K. Sycara, ``Using Haptic Feedback in Human Robotic Swarm Interaction'', Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, San Diego, California, September 30-October 4, 2013.

    16. P. Walker, S. Nunnally, M. Lewis, N. Chakraborty, and K. Sycara, ``Using Different Levels of Automation to Improve Human Influence of Robot Swarms'', Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, San Diego, California, September 30-October 4, 2013.

    17. S. Nunnally, P. Walker, A. Kolling, N. Chakraborty, M. Lewis, K. Sycara, and M. Goodrich, ``Human Influence of Robotic Swarms with Bandwidth Limits and Localization Errors'', 2012 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, Cybernetics (IEEE SMC 2012) , Seoul, Korea, October 2012.

    18. P. Walker, A. Kolling, N. Chakraborty, S. Nunnally, K. Sycara, and M. Lewis, ``Neglect Benevolence in Human Control of Swarms in the Presence of Latency'', 2012 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, Cybernetics (IEEE SMC 2012) , Seoul, Korea, October 2012.