Experimental analysis of a variable autonomy framework for controlling a remotely operating mobile robot

This paper presents a principled experimental analysis of a variable autonomy control approach to mobile robot navigation. A Human-Initiative (HI) variable autonomy system is investigated, in which a human operator is able to switch the Level of Autonomy (LOA) between teleoperation (joystick control) and autonomous control (robot navigates autonomously towards waypoints selected by the human) on-the-fly. Our hypothesis is that the HI system will enable superior navigation performance compared to either teleoperation or autonomy alone, especially in scenarios where the performance of both the human and the robot may at times become degraded. We evaluate our hypothesis through carefully controlled and repeatable experiments using a significant number of human test-subjects.