Towards Human-in-the-Loop Autonomous Multi-Robot Operations

Marcel Kaufmann, Katherine Sheridan, Giovanni Beltrame

Abstract: Rapid advances in artificial intelligence are driving applications of robotics and automation in transport and logistics, providing new solutions to highway systems, passenger transport, last-mile delivery, and automated warehouses. Because the environment is dynamic and not entirely knowable, human supervision will be needed for the foreseeable future to solve unexpected problems. Research in other domains suggests that human-robot teams may even offer the optimal solution, as the relative strengths of human and artificial intelligence can be combined. However, realizing human-robot complementarity is challenging because sophisticated AI techniques lead to increasingly opaque robot control programs, and operators’ cognitive capacities can be exceeded as the sizes of autonomous fleets grow. We present our vision and initial results for a framework for human supervisory control and human robot teamwork for automated multi-vehicle systems.