Enhancing Human Self-Regulation with Controllable Robot Swarms Acting as Extended Bodies

Abstract

Human-swarm interaction investigates the integration of human capabilities with the benefits of robot swarms. In this context, we are interested in how the natural self-regulatory capabilities of humans can be enhanced by engineered robot swarms over different applications. We formulated a grid world survival game as an experimental framework that has implications for search and rescue, in which a human must be stabilized against environmental disturbances such as falling objects. Building upon the abstract survival game, controllable swarm behaviours based on virtual pheromones that protect the human from environmental disturbances are proposed. Here, human and swarm are treated as part of the same hybrid superorganism in which the swarm acts as an extended and controllable body of the human. We evaluated basic protective behaviours in the context of the survival game and used the results to synthesize a hybrid superorganism design.