Human Research and Engineering Directorate Research Areas

Understanding Human Interactions with Unmanned Systems

Advisor: Cosenzo, Keryl A.  (kcosenzo@us.army.mil 410.278.5885)

Location: Human Research and Engineering Directorate, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD 210055425

Key words: Human-robot interaction; unmanned systems, trust, social and cultural context, levels of autonomy

Future human operations will include a growing array of unmanned technology with the vision of seamless integration of the unmanned systems into military and civilian activity.  The unmanned technology will be used across a wide range of military activities, including combat, combat service support and Security and Stabilization Operations (SASO), in urban, rural, developed and less developed environments.   To more fully understand the interaction of humans with unmanned systems, we are seeking basic research into areas that cross cut the applied research in human-robot interaction.  Specific areas of interest include:  the impact of social and cultural context on human-robot interaction; levels of trust in unmanned systems and their impact on performance; levels of autonomy; and, research addressing measurement and assessment of human-robot (individual and team) system performance.  Research results should be applicable across environments, operations and platforms.  Of interest are single human-robot teams, as well as multiple, distributed human-robot teams and robot-robot coordination.  ARL-HRED is currently conducting research on human-robot interaction (HRI) at Aberdeen Proving Ground. MD. Research can be proposed for modeling, laboratory, simulation, and field environments.

References:

Bainbridge, A.,  Hart, J. Kim, E. & Scassellati, B. (2008). The effect of presence on human-robot interaction.  RO-MAN 2008, The 17th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 701-706.

Goodrich, M. & Schultz, A. (2007). Human robot interaction: A survey. Foundations and Trends in Human-Computer Interaction, 1, 203-275