RoboLeader: An agent for supervisory control of multiple robots

We developed an intelligent agent, RoboLeader, that could assist human operators in route planning for a team of ground robots. We compared the operators' target detection performance in the 4-robot and 8-robot conditions. Results showed that the participants detected significantly less targets and had significantly worse situation awareness when there were 8 robots compared to the 4-robot condition. Those participants with higher spatial ability detected more targets than did those with lower spatial ability. Participants' self-assessed workload was affected by the number of robots under control, their gender, and their attentional control ability.