Role Sharing Analysis on Multi-operator Cooperative Work

This paper addresses a quantification method for role sharing in cooperative tasks. By the method, we found that the ratio of three typical indexes relate to task performance. Most of conventional human-machine systems assumed to assist single operator. In such case, the systems should only pay attention his/her operation characteristics. If there were multiple operators, they also include altruistic behaviours during the work. Such behaviours could not be regarded by such one-on-one assist system. Since intelligent assist systems are expected to apply in human society, the systems are required work among humans. A challenge of our research is to quantify such humans' altruistic behaviours, especially what relating cooperation in the task involving multiple participants. In this paper, role sharing characteristics are quantified in order to evaluate the cooperative performance. For this quantification, ratio indexes of three kinds of behaviours is focused on. One is observation behaviours for other operator's work, which is typical altruistic behaviour in a cooperative task. Second is ratio of egoistic behaviour as active conveyance. Then, total activity by motion distance of the robot could be indexes of the role sharing. Finally, correlation between these ratio of indexes and a task performance is analyzed. Furthermore an advanced assist using the evaluation is discussed.