(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006)
Arkin, Ronald C.; Endo, Yoichiro; Ulam, Patrick D.; Wagner, Alan
As the capabilities, range of missions, and the size
of robot teams increase, the ability for a human operator to
account for all the factors in these complex scenarios can become
exceedingly difficult. Our previous research has studied the
use of case-based reasoning (CBR) tools to assist a user in
the generation of multi-robot missions. These tools, however,
typically assume that the robots available for the mission are
of the same type (i.e., homogeneous). We loosen this assumption
through the integration of contract-net protocol (CNP) based
task allocation coupled with a CBR-based mission specification
wizard. Two alternative designs are explored for combining case-based
mission specification and CNP-based team allocation as
well as the tradeoffs that result from the selection of one of these
approaches over the other.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006)
Wagner, Alan R.; Endo, Yoichiro; Ulam, Patrick D.; Arkin, Ronald C.
This paper investigates the problem of user interface design and
evaluation for autonomous teams of heterogeneous mobile robots. We explore
an operator modeling approach to multi-robot user interface evaluation.
Specifically the authors generated GOMS models, a type of user model, to
investigate potential interface problems and to guide the interface
development process. Results indicate that our interface design changes
improve the usability of multi-robot mission generation substantially. We
conclude that modeling techniques such as GOMS can play an important role
in robotic interface development. Moreover, this research indicates that these
techniques can be performed in an inexpensive and timely manner, potentially
reducing the need for costly and demanding usability studies.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006)
Arkin, Ronald C.; Endo, Yoichiro; Ulam, Patrick D.; Wagner, Alan
This work presents the evaluation of two mission
specification and task allocation architectures. These architectures,
described in part 1 of this paper, present novel means with
which to integrate a case-based reasoning (CBR) mission planner
with contract net protocol (CNP) based task allocation. In the first
design, the CBR and runtime-CNP architecture, the case-based
mission planner generates mission plans that support necessary
behaviors for CNP-based task allocation and execution. In the
second design, the CBR and premission-CNP architecture, task
allocation takes place during mission specification. The results
of an empirical evaluation of the CBR and runtime-CNP across
three naval scenarios is described. Finally, we briefly describe
an earlier usability evaluation of the CBR and premission-CNP
architecture using goals, operators, methods, and selection rules
modeling.