Interactive Multi-Robot Command and Control with Quasi-Natural Command Language

Commanding and controlling a multi-robot system (MRS) is a challenging task with complexity increasing progressively as the number and the heterogeneity of robots in the system increases. A natural language-based interactive command and control system that allows a human operator the ability to focus on mission-critical tasks while directing the activities of the MRS is an essential tool to deal with the complexity inherent in a MRS operation. A controlled natural language is an efficient and intuitive way to interact with systems. We have developed and evaluated such a language for giving robots high level orders as well as for adjusting robot behavior with respect to those high level tasks. As additional support, a scheduling system based on genetic algorithms helps the user by suggesting an efficient schedule for all planned tasks and by keeping track of the resources required. In addition, we have also designed a mechanism to aggregate and fuse the information gathered by the robots so that the aggregated information can be sent to the commander formulated using our controlled language, thus enhancing situation awareness without overwhelming the commander with all the myriad details the multi-robot system gathers.