The Hunt for Situation Awareness: Human-Robot Interaction in Search and Rescue

Abstract

Robots are gaining acceptance as team members in complex task completion, though they must be directed or closely supervised by human operators. Effective interaction between operators and robots is dependent upon the operator's ability to develop situation awareness on the robot and environment. In teleoperation this requires the effective distribution of attention between remote activities and the local controls and interfaces. Limitations in attentional resources can limit SA on one or the other place, resulting in overall decreased system performance. We present observations made at a robot-assisted search and rescue exercise to describe common SA problems in vehicle control. This paper focuses on human-robot interaction and the role of SA in search operations. Key SA concerns observed and discussed include difficulties in robot localization, inadequate support for team operations and shared SA, workload in the visually demanding task, and poor integration of data at the interface.