Physical Robot Swarm Testbed at ARL: Specifications and Experimental Design Possibilities

Abstract

The Arena for Indoor Research on Swarm-Human Interaction Performance (AIRSHIP) testbed is a human swarm interaction testbed located at ARL-West in Los Angeles, California. It currently features 10 small quadcopter unmanned aerial vehicles with indoor localization capability, open-source firmware, and communication with a native PC client. A physical testbed was deemed necessary for human multirobot interaction studies because it would accurately reflect the human psychophysiological response to interaction with physical robots, the variability and stochasticity of environmental factors, and true hardware constraints on proposed algorithms. This report details the current status and future vision for AIRSHIP. We developed the testbed with a focus on enabling research in these areas: user interfaces, interaction modalities, agent hardware and algorithms, system scalability, and human variability. A set of possible scenarios for human subjects studies is also given, such as search and rescue, monitoring, and construction.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Nov 13, 2019
Accession Number
AD1084684

Entities

People

  • Ashley N. Foots
  • James Humann
  • Kimberly A. Pollard
  • Oluseyi A. Ayorinde
  • Susan G. Hill
  • Suya You

Organizations

  • United States Army Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Automata Theory
  • Autonomous Systems
  • Cognitive Systems Engineering
  • Computers
  • Control Systems
  • Human Factors Engineering
  • Human Systems Integration
  • Human-Robot Interaction
  • Operating Systems
  • Robotic Swarms
  • Robots
  • Self Organizing Systems
  • Simultaneous Localization And Mapping
  • Three Dimensional
  • Unmanned Vehicles
  • Virtual Reality

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Agent-Based Social Robotics and Mobile-Assisted Learning in Virtual Environments.
  • Parallel and Distributed Computing.
  • Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Autonomous Capabilities and Mission Reconnaissance.

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - Autonomous Systems
  • Autonomy
  • Autonomy - Autonomous System Control
  • Autonomy - Human-Robot Interaction