Fan-out: measuring human control of multiple robots

  • Authors:
  • Dan R. Olsen, Jr.;Stephen Bart Wood

  • Affiliations:
  • Brigham Young University, Provo, UT;Brigham Young University, Provo, UT

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

A goal of human-robot interaction is to allow one user to operate multiple robots simultaneously. In such a scenario the robots provide leverage to the user's attention. The number of such robots that can be operated is called the fan-out of a human-robot team. Robots that have high neglect tolerance and lower interaction time will achieve higher fan-out. We define an equation that relates fan-out to a robot's activity time and its interaction time. We describe how to measure activity time and fan-out. We then use the fan-out equation to compute interaction effort. We can use this interaction effort as a measure of the effectiveness of a human-robot interaction design. We describe experiments that validate the fan-out equation and its use as a metric for improving human-robot interaction.