Investigating Influence of Complexity and Stressors on Human Performance during Remote Navigation of a Robot Plattform in a Virtual 3D Maze

Human-machine systems for identifying and defusing improvised explosive devices need to be designed according to specific user requirements and task-specific affordances. The navigation of mobile robots in unknown environments is, for example, a typical task of emergency response personnel, which occurs during situation assessment and analysis of suspicious objects. This contribution investigates determinants of the efficient performance as well as human behaviour in remote navigation tasks. In an experimental study, participants had to navigate forwards and backwards in a virtual 3D maze, then draw the path they had covered from memory. Task complexity and environmental stressors were varied between levels, to examine their impact on performance (task completion time, route retracing performance) and subjective measures (mental workload, perceived difficulty). In a sample of 50 participants, a negative relationship between complexity and the dependent variables was found. For the stressors, only the addition of an acoustic stressor had an impact on the performance measures. A discussion of the practical implications of these results is provided.