Towards a framework for architecting heterogeneous teams of humans and robots for space exploration
Author(s)
Arnold, Julie Ann, S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Other Contributors
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Advisor
Jeffrey A. Hoffman and Joseph H. Saleh.
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Human-robotic systems will play a critical role in space exploration, should NASA embark on missions to the Moon and Mars. A unified framework to optimally leverage the capabilities of humans and robots in space exploration will be an invaluable tool for mission planning. Although there is a growing body of literature on human robotic interactions (HRI), there is not yet a framework that lends itself both to a formal representation of heterogeneous teams of humans and robots, and to an evaluation of such teams across a series of common, task-based metrics. My objective in this thesis is to lay the foundations of a unified framework for architecting human-robotic systems for optimal task performance given a set of metrics. First, I review literature from different fields including HRI and human-computer interaction, and synthesize multiple considerations for architecting heterogeneous teams of humans and robots. I then present methods to systematically and formally capture the characteristics that describe a human-robotic system to provide a basis for evaluating human-robotic systems against a common set of metrics. (cont.) I propose an analytical formulation of common metrics to guide the design and evaluate the performance of human-robot systems, and I then apply the analytical formulation to a case study of a multi-agent human-robot system developed at NASA. Finally, I discuss directions for further research aimed at developing this framework.
Description
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2006. Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-121).
Date issued
2006Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and AstronauticsPublisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Keywords
Aeronautics and Astronautics.