Human Robot Interface Design for Large Swarm

Human-robot interfaces for interacting with hundreds of autonomous robots must be very different from single-robot interfaces. The central design challenge is developing techniques to maintain, program and interact with the robots without having to handle them individually. This requires robots that can support hands-free operation, which drives many other aspect if the design.

This article presents the experience with Human-Robot interfaces to develop, debug, and evaluate distributed algorithms on the112-robot iRobot Swarm. These Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) techniques fall into three categories: a physical infrastructure to support hands-free operation, utility software for centralized development and debugging, and carefully designed lights, sounds and movement that allow the user interpret the inner working of groups of robots without having to look away or use special equipment.

The task interacting with hundreds of autonomous robots presents unique challenge for the user interface designer. Traditional graphical user interfaces, data logs, and even standard power switches fail to provide the user with a practical, efficient interface. The core issue is one of scale: in a system of n robots, any task that has to be done to one robot must be done to the remaining n-1. Our solution is a swarm that can operate largely without physical interaction, using an infrastructure that allows remote power management and autonomous recharging, and has software for centralized user input and techniques for global swarm output.