ABSTRACT
cits begin to appear. This difficulty in integrating the “robo-immersed view” with expectancies regarding the search process mirrors Casper’s (2002) observations at the World Trade Center. In both cases, fatigue certainly played a part; it seems likely, however, that lack of a mental model of how a robot “sees” is also a factor.Videotaped recordings of the robot’s eye view during the five operator deployments revealed an almost even split between the amounts of time operators spent actually moving the robot (51%) compared with allowing it to remain stationary (49%.) The percentage of time the robot spent stationary is very similar to the percentage of statements devoted to situation awareness Levels 1 and 2 (both are around 50%). In future work, we plan to study the association of operator statements and robot movements.Operators discussed search strategy with their teammates using information about the environment, and relating this information to what they already knew. However, only 16% of their statements concerned the state of the environment, or related what they were seeing to known information, a telling percentage in light of the necessity of this information in search operations. The effective use of team processes and communications to compensate for the lack of situation awareness suggests there is an interaction between situation awareness and team communication. Operators with high situation awareness talked to their teammates more about search strategies and robot situatedness; gave more instructions ; and reported more on the state of the environment, robot, and information gathered.Last, quantitative analyses confirm previous research on human-robot interaction in search and rescue operations (Casper, 2002; Casper & Murphy, 2003), which suggested that these tasks will be short and require two operators, not one. Time on task with the robots was of short duration, with the average deployment drop lasting less than 15 min. (Time on task describes the time elapsed from the initial drop of the robot until the conclusion of the operator’s run.) Actual drop times at the World Trade Center were even less, averaging 6 to 7 min (Casper, 2002). The ability to complete the search in a short time is a significant factor in the rescue worker’s perception of the utility of a rescue robot. As new control tasks evolve utilizing the robots (e.g., carrying medical pay-loads to victims), operators may spend longer periods of time deploying them.
