On the Measurement of Situation Awareness for Effective Human-Robot Interaction in Teleoperated Systems

Abstract

Several methods of measuring the situation awareness (SA) of a human who is teleoperating a robot are compared for the domain of urban search and rescue (USAR), to identify those that have the greatest potential for developing more reliable and accurate ways of measuring SA for effectively operating robot systems. Such comparative studies are essential because SA has been identified as a key human factors issue since post-September 11, 2001, operations for effective task performance in (tele)robotics. This paper discusses the pros and cons of the main aspects that need to be included in developing reliable SA measurement methods from the related domain of air traffic control, in which SA has a long research history. These methods have been adopted and modified accordingly to address needs of teleoperating robot systems and have been tested in a realistic USAR simulated scenario developed especially for performing these assessments. The results were compared against each other as well as with existing measures. A new method of measuring task performance that is more appropriate for USAR is also presented and tested within the comparative studies.