On January 22, 2008, “Human Factors & Ergonomics Society” Potomac Chapter members and colleagues met in Bethesda to hear Dr. Salvatore Schipani, Information Access Division, describe a NIST methodology for developing performance standards for Urban Search and Rescue robots. Schipani presented experimental results concerning a hypothesized maze test scenario for use in assessing navigation and situation awareness maintenance.
Currently, the majority of user-robot interactions during emergency scenarios are limited to direct control, with the most common operator interface a video feed from the robotic platform to user. Unfortunately, operators frequently incur issues when dynamically attempting to perceive and evaluate remote environments, causing them to generate and subsequently execute sub-optimal control decisions.
Schipani found that significant differences in task completion and decision-making times enabled classification of robot platforms based on performance. He also found that the degree of effort exerted in correcting navigational errors, as well as the amount of encounters with obstacles, correlated with times required to make decisions; the longer it took to make a decision, the greater the probability that this decision was incorrect. The results validated the hypothesis of a maze as beneficial in eliciting data necessary for assessing performance during human-controlled robot manipulation.
Discussion at the meeting culminated in the need for and methods of conducting impartial practitioner-oriented assessments under operationally relevant yet experimentally controlled conditions. Specifically, there is a need for development of effective interface design guidelines offering fused sensor information. This is in contrast to today’s approach of compelling users to mentally combine data from multiple sources.
This effort is focused on the development of performance measures concerned with robot platform technical readiness levels in the domains of homeland security, crisis response, hazardous environment operations, and medical emergencies.
Contact: Salvatore Schipani (ITL), ext. 5846