Towards situational awareness from robotic group motion

The control of multiple robots in the context of tele-exploration tasks is often attentionally taxing, resulting in a loss of situational awareness for operators. Unmanned aerial vehicle swarms require significantly more multitasking than controlling a plane, thus making it necessary to devise intuitive feedback sources and control methods for these robots. The purpose of this article is to examine a swarm's nonverbal behaviour as a possible way to increase situational awareness and reduce the operators cognitive load by soliciting intuitions about the swarm's behaviour. To progress on the definition of a database of nonverbal expressions for robot swarms, we first define categories of communicative intents based on spontaneous descriptions of common swarm behaviours. The obtained typology confirms that the first two levels (as defined by Endsley: elements of environment and comprehension of the situation) can be shared through swarms motion-based communication. We then investigate group motion parameters potentially connected to these communicative intents. Results are that synchronized movement and tendency to form figures help convey meaningful information to the operator. We then discuss how this can be applied to realistic scenarios for the intuitive command of remote robotic teams.