Effectiveness of RoboLeader for Dynamic Re-Tasking in an Urban Environment

RoboLeader is an intelligent agent that has the capabilities of coordinating a team of ground robots and revising route plans for the robots based on battlefield intelligence. Specifically, RoboLeader can support dynamic re-tasking based on battlefield developments as well as coordination between aerial and ground robots in pursuit of moving targets. In the current study, we manipulated the level of automation for RoboLeader as well as the presence of a visualization tool (which informed the participants about their target entrapment performance) in the RoboLeader user interface. Results showed that RoboLeader (Fully Automated condition) was more effective in encapsulating the moving targets than were the human operators (when they were either without assistance from RoboLeader or when they were partially assisted by RoboLeader). Participants successfully encapsulated the moving targets only 63% of the time in the Manual condition but 89% of the time when they were assisted by RoboLeader. Those participants who play video games frequently demonstrated significantly better encapsulation performance than did infrequent gamers; they also had better situation awareness of the mission environment. Visualization had little effect on participants’ performance. Finally, participants reported significantly higher workload when they were in the Manual condition than when they were assisted by RoboLeader.