The design of self-organizing human–swarm intelligence

Abstract

Human–swarm interaction is a frontier in the realms of swarm robotics and human-factors engineering. However, no holistic theory has been explicitly formulated that can inform how humans and robot swarms should interact through an interface while considering real-world demands, the relative capabilities of the components, as well as the desired joint-system behaviours. In this article, we apply a holistic perspective that we refer to as joint human–swarm loops, that is, a cybernetic system made of human, swarm and interface. We argue that a solution for human–swarm interaction should make the joint human–swarm loop an intelligent system that balances between centralized and decentralized control. The swarm-amplified human is suggested as a possible design that combines perspectives from swarm robotics, human-factors engineering and theoretical neuroscience to produce such a joint human–swarm loop. Essentially, it states that the robot swarm should be integrated into the human’s low-level nervous system function. This requires modelling both the robot swarm and the biological nervous system as self-organizing systems. We discuss multiple design implications that follow from the swarm-amplified human, including a computational experiment that shows how the robot swarm itself can be a self-organizing interface based on minimal computational logic.

Robot swarms as embodied extensions of humans

“…If the robot swarm should be deployed in the real world, one must also take into account how human operators can control the swarm due to technical, ethical and legal issues. Human-swarm interaction (HSI) investigates how the capabilities and demands of human operators should be joined with the decentralized control architectures of swarms [9,10].…”

“…IOP Publishing doi:10.1088/1757-899X/1261/1/012015 2 Recently, we have proposed a mindset on how this design challenge of HSI can be approached [9]. We think that it is essential to take into account three perspectives when building swarms; the technical perspective (swarm engineering), the human perspective (humancentred design) as well as how human and swarm can be combined into a joint human-swarm loop.…”

“…Building on this view, we have further elaborated that HSI can also be interpreted as human-swarm intelligence, because the design goal is to build an intelligent (i.e., adaptive, robust and scalable) joint human-swarm loop that can deal with the world. Figure 1 summarizes this view with the triad of human-swarm intelligence which highlights its main design dimensions [9]: operator training [13], swarm engineering [2,4] and human-swarm interface design [9,10]. In our previous work, we also discussed a design theory called the swarm-amplified human [9] that could potentially guide the selection of design solutions for HSI.…”

“…Figure 1 summarizes this view with the triad of human-swarm intelligence which highlights its main design dimensions [9]: operator training [13], swarm engineering [2,4] and human-swarm interface design [9,10]. In our previous work, we also discussed a design theory called the swarm-amplified human [9] that could potentially guide the selection of design solutions for HSI. This proposed design theory narrows down the design solution space for each of the design dimensions (human, swarm, and human-swarm) in the triad of HSI.…”

“…This extension is assumed to amplify natural cognition, given the assumption that higher-order computation depends on the body's morphology and sensorymotor capabilities [16,17]. Figure 2 shows a simple example of how a robot swarm forms a network that connects a human h to relevant object features f i in a two-dimensional world D. For further details, we refer the reader to [9].…”