The Effects of Vehicle Number and Function on Performance and Workload in Human-Robot Teaming

Abstract

In the context of a synthetic task environment, human-robot interactions were observed with unmanned underwater vehicles during a mine-mapping scenario. Two-person teams (i.e, dyads) completed four missions, with either heterogeneous or homogeneous vehicle distribution between team members, and either four or eight vehicles per dyad. Based on performance and workload measures, we found performance deficits for dyads with large numbers of vehicles to control and for vehicles of a single vs. multifunctional task distribution.