Exploring interaction with unmanned systems : A case study regarding interaction with an autonomous unmanned vehicle

Unmanned systems (US:s) of various kinds are becoming more and more sought after resources as they do not have an onboard driver, and thus, can be employed in situations that are either dangerous or impossible for humans to engage in. Consequently, US:s are envisioned to play a large role both in civilian and military contexts in the future, which presents new challenges regarding how humans should interact with these new systems. The purpose with this thesis was to explore different ways of interaction between human and artificial agents and how interfaces of autonomous systems supports this interaction. To investigate this, a literature overview of previous research regarding various ways of interacting with unmanned systems was conducted. This illustrated that a multimodal interface offers a more robust and natural form of interaction compared to fixed interaction principles that have their advantages and disadvantages depending on both context and situation. Moreover, a case study was conducted to explore human-autonomy interaction in a realistic battle mission, simulated in Virtual Battle Simulator 3. The results from the study indicate that speech is an essential mode of communication for controlling an unmanned autonomous ground vehicle in a mounted setting. Furthermore, problems were identified with the visual and auditory feedback from the unmanned vehicle in which verbal feedback was identified as a possible solution. Experience regarding both the simulation environment and as a commander of mechanised units was also identified as an important factor to adhere to in future studies.