Effects of individual differences on human-agent teaming for multi-robot control

Abstract

In the current experiment, we simulated a military multitasking environment and evaluated the effects of RoboLeader on the performance of human operators (i.e., vehicle commanders) who had the responsibility of supervising the plans/routes for a convoy of three vehicles while maintaining proper 360° local security around their own vehicle. We evaluated whether - and to what extent - operator individual differences (spatial ability, attentional control, and video gaming experience) impacted the operator's performance. In two out of three mission scenarios, the participants had access to the assistance of an intelligent agent, RoboLeader. Results showed that RoboLeader's level of autonomy had a significant impact on participants' concurrent target detection task performance and perceived workload. Those participants who played action video games frequently had significant better situation awareness of the mission environment. Those participants with lower spatial ability had increasingly better situation awareness as RoboLeader's level of autonomy increased; however, those with higher spatial ability did not exhibit the same trend. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.