Interface for Monitoring and Interacting with Multi-Terrain Robot Teams

Previous research on human-robot interfaces has been mainly concerned with interaction between one person and one robot or software agent. Yet, there are many scenarios in which multiple human-multiple robot interactions are possible, such as with teams of rescue robots, combat robot teams, or surveillance robots. Our work seeks to turn a fast-paced interactive multi-agent system (Gamebots) into an interface where multiple researchers monitor and interact with teams of multi-terrain robots. Gamebots (figure 1) consists of a commercially developed 3D graphics engine Unreal Tournament (UT), which has been extended and enhanced to provide the important capabilities required for multi-agent research. It supports humans-as-agents, thus allowing multi-agent researchers to investigate scenarios involving human-agent competitions and collaboration. Developing Human-Robot Interfaces To make human-robot interaction more effective when collaborating in tasks, both the user interface and the autonomous robots must be design to specifically handle the issues that arise when multiple human operators must interact with teams of robots to perform tasks, such as urban search and rescue (USAR). We are in the preliminary stages of developing a new interface that will allow multiple researchers the ability to simultaneously interact with multiple physical robots and software agents within a 3D virtual environment, Gamebots[Adobbati]. This ability will greatly facilitate collaboration between the robots and researcher. The task of USAR is very complex and dynamic, and interacting with the robots can be very challenging. In creating this interface, we face many challenges, such as, developing a method to combine the information gathered by all the agents about the actual physical environment in order to accurately represent it in the virtual environment