Scaling effects in multi-robot control

The present study investigates the effect of the number of controlled robots on performance of an urban search and rescue (USAR) task using a realistic simulation. Task performance increased in going from four to eight controlled robots but deteriorated in moving from eight to twelve. Workload increased monotonically with number of robots. Performance per robot decreased with increases in team size. Results are consistent with earlier studies suggesting a limit of between 8-12 robots for direct human control. This study demonstrates that these findings generalize to a more realistic setting and complex task.

Authors

• Prasanna Velagapudi
• Paul Scerri
• Katia P. Sycara
• Huadong Wang
• Michael Lewis 0001
• Jijun Wang 0002

Keywords

• Robots
• Robot kinematics
• Humans
• Collision avoidance
• Solid modeling
• Three dimensional displays
• Control systems
• Multi-robot Control
• Realistic Simulation
• Search Task
• Team Size
• Autonomic System
• Robotic System
• High Workload
• Multi-agent Systems
• Level Of Autonomy
• Robot Control
• Human Operator
• Open Task
• Number Of Switches
• High-fidelity Simulation
• Laser Ranging
• Swarm Robotics
• Number Of Missions
• Individual Robots
• Span Of Control