Rise of Civil Robots

This talk will discuss the use of unmanned land, sea, and aerial systems for civil and environmental engineering with specific focus on the human-robot interaction necessary for these types of systems to be of practical use in the field. A new human-robot interface for ad hoc Mission Specialists that provides role-specific visual common ground and permits shared control of the robot's payload camera and verbal coordination with the Pilot will be discussed.

This research is of importance to human-robot interaction researchers and practitioners, as well as those in the fields of robotics, human-computer interaction, and artificial intelligence, because it found that a human Pilot role is necessary for assistance and understanding, and that there are hidden dependencies in the human-robot team that affect Mission Specialist performance. Additional future directions for this research will be discussed.

Speaker/Performer: Joshua Peschel, University of Illinois