Characterizing human perception of emergent swarm behaviors

Abstract

Abstract-Human swarm interaction (HSI) involves operators gathering information about a swarm's state as it evolves, and using it to make informed decisions on how to influence the collective behavior of the swarm. In order to determine the proper input, an operator must have an accurate representation and understanding of the current swarm state, including what emergent behavior is currently happening. In this paper, we investigate how human operators perceive three types of common, emergent swarm behaviors: rendezvous, flocking, and dispersion. Particularly, we investigate how recognition of these behaviors differ from each other in the presence of background noise. Our results show that, while participants were good at recognizing all behaviors, there are indeed differences between the three, with rendezvous being easier to recognize than flocking or dispersion. Furthermore, differences in recognition are also affected by viewing time for flocking. Feedback from participants was also especially insightful for understanding how participants went about recognizing behaviors-allowing for potential avenues of research in future studies.

Collective expression: how robotic swarms convey information with group motion

“…An important issue for the supervision of a semiautonomous swarm is the possibility to efficiently convey information about the swarm's current state, its future states, and the effects of human input on its behavior. This work originates from the recent key contributions to human-swarm interaction [5,[9][10][11][12][13][14] and the use of nonverbal communication from robots [15][16][17][18][19]. Both domains are discussed in this section, leading to the key concept of the cohesion of a swarm for group-level perception of motion.…”

“…Humans are generally good at recognizing patterns of collective motion [13]. However, because human attention can fluctuate and the capacity of humans working mem-ory is limited, the number of robots a single operator can control is also limited [12,21].…”

Human Interaction Through an Optimal Sequencer to Control Robotic Swarms

“…Participants found it awkward when they were requested to provide unanchored and arbitrary parameters and received feedback in the form of paths which might fail to reach the goal (incomplete) or a message indicating them to be invalid. Participants may prefer real-time interaction methods for switching between behaviors as in [10], [11] rather than preplanning a complete behavior sequence which places greater demands on working memory and decision making. We are considering adding intermediate goal functions to shorten the feedback loop and make the process more controllable for users.…”

“…Researchers have proven that this phenomena, they term neglect benevolence, exists for all LTI (linear time invariant) systems [4] and that human participants can learn to approximate optimal switch times between swarm behaviors although their responses almost always precede the optimal time [9]. While control of a library of behaviors and the ability to specify their parameters provide an extraordinary degree of control over a swarm, humans have difficulty in recognizing swarm states [10] and predicting the effects of their interventions [11] as well as the timing of their actions [9], making unaided control difficult and inefficient. The problem of behavior composition is extremely difficult even for a computer because of the large space of alternative behaviors and durations that must be searched.…”

Trust Repair in Human-Swarm Teams+

“…Prior literature on human-robot trust, has found that trust is influenced primarily by the perceived performance of the robot [8]. However, task performance of swarms is often not intelligible to the operator [25], [28], since swarms perform tasks through complex interactions among the swarm members themselves, such as consensus that takes time to converge. For example, the swarm may not follow the operator's command in a case where it first needs to maintain connectivity which may not be readily apparent to the operator.…”