A User Multi-Robot System Interaction Paradigm for a Multi-Robot Mission Editor

Abstract

Many applications such as space and underwater exploration, operations in dangerous environment, service robotics, military applications, etc. can call upon multi-robot systems. These systems, although far from achievement, can carry out difficult or even tasks impossible to achieve by a single robot. A team of robots provides a certain redundancy, contributes to the achievement of a task in a collaborative way and should be able to go beyond what could be done by a single robot. According to (Parker, 2000) and (Arai & al., 2002), works in collective mobile robotics can be classified in three categories: • Reconfigurable robots systems also called Cellular Robots Systems. A cellular robot is an auto-organized robot-like system composed of a large number of units called cells. This idea is inspired by the organization of a living system. Various fields were studied in this domain, in particular the swarm intelligence (Bonabeau & Theraukaz, 2000) (Beni & Hackwood, 1992) on the cyclic swarms. One will also note the work of Fukuda (Fukada & Nakagawa, 1987) on the system CEBOT. • Trajectory planning: one can quote the works (Premvuti & Yuta, 1990) on the control of the aircraft traffic, of (Arai & al., 1989) and of (Wang, 1989) on the movement of groups of robots in formation. • Architectures for multi-robot co-operation among which the system ACTRESS (Asama & al., 1989) (Sellem & Dalgalarrondo 1999). ACTRESS deals with maintenance in a known and structured environment. It resolves conflicts between robots and allocates tasks by creating staffs of robots. In this paper, our interest is mostly focused on the human-system interactions. Studies on human-system interactions show that, to use efficiently the system, the user has to accept it. This acceptance implies that two concepts are to be taken into account: usability and appropriation (section 0 and 0). The user also needs to be permanently informed on the activity of the system, on the individual activities of its entities, on the state of the different components to compare the mental representation of the mission progress he/she has at the beginning of the mission and what is really executed by the system. This is peculiarly true when a user (e.g. a handicapped person, a person with specific needs) requests services to a multi robot system. O pe n A cc es s D at ab as e w w w .in te hw eb .c om