Human interaction with intelligent systems-of-systems

Background

Swarm technology is a projected next step in drone research and development. Today, an operator typically pilots a single drone. In the future, operators are expected to control multiple collaborating and autonomous drones that display an emergent behavior; their collective behavior emerges from local (and autonomous) interactions between drones. This presents new technological requirements and new cognitive demands for the operator. Specifically, questions are raised regarding which control mechanisms, feedback systems, and visualization tools the operator will require, and how these may affect the operator’s mental workload and situation awareness. The interaction design is also affected by the operator’s task and work context. It is therefore important to consider the technological, human, and organizational factors when developing autonomous drone systems.

Goal

The purpose of the HISOS project is to identify and understand the swarm operator’s command and control challenges and develop design solutions for systems and user interfaces to support the collaboration between humans and swarm systems. The goal is to develop design guidelines for human-swarm interaction that can be used to develop safe and efficient autonomous systems-of-systems.

Applications

The research conducted in the HISOS project is connected to several other RISE projects. For example, HISOS provides input to the CONTROL project which serves to develop a testbed for simulating and commanding autonomous systems-of-systems. In the Eyes-On-Scene project, researchers study how a drone can be deployed to assist in maritime search and rescue operations, where HISOS provides a vision of multiple collaborating drones for this use case. 

The insights gained from HISOS regarding human-swarm interaction can be generalized to inform the design of other autonomous systems-of-systems, like autonomous public transport systems, transport and logistics, or surveillance systems. Lessons learned also applies to the command and control of aerial, ground, or underwater autonomous vehicles.