A field experiment of autonomous mobility: Operator workload for one and two robots

An experiment was conducted on aspects of human-robot interaction in a field environment using the U.S. Army's Experimental Unmanned Vehicle (XUV). Goals of this experiment were to examine the use of scalable interfaces and to examine operator span of control when controlling one versus two autonomous unmanned ground vehicles. We collected workload ratings from two Soldiers after they had performed missions that included monitoring, downloading and reporting on simulated reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition (RSTA) images, and responding to unplanned operator intervention requests from the XUV. Several observations are made based on workload data, experimenter notes, and informal interviews with operators.