HCBIS 2012 - Symposium on Human Control of Bio-Inspired Swarms

Robotic systems composed of a large number of robots, often called robot swarms, are envisioned to play an increasingly important role in applications such as search, rescue, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations. Nowadays, many mobile robots that are deployed for such applications are still teleoperated by a single or multiple operators. While these platforms are individually very capable, the development of cheaper hardware allows the consideration of swarm systems composed many more robots but with each individual being far less powerful. To control such systems is a considerable challenge due to the limitations of each individual robot and the sheer number of robots that need to be coordinated to successfully complete a mission. Autonomous algorithms provide an opportunity to mitigate some of the complexity an operator faces in controlling such swarms. But it is not clear which tasks will ultimately fall to the operator and which should rather be solved by the autonomy.
Research Challenges
How can humans influence swarms following "baked-in" control laws?
What are the characteristics of models of interagent influence?
What metaphors are most effective for humans
Biomemetic
Physicomemetic
Is the human role to assist the swarm (break it out of local minima) or to direct the swarm based on things it cannot sense?
What are the most effective mechanisms for selecting members of the swarm to be influenced?
How can optimization for autonomy be balanced with optimization for collaboration and cooperation?
How can controls and displays be designed to support central control of a distributed system?
Adversary response: how to detect when a swarm has been compromised?
How can a human infer the intent and "situation awareness" of a swarm
Can quorum sensing be understood by a human controller?