Publication Date
2021
Document Type
Dissertation/Thesis
First Advisor
Butail, Sachit
Degree Name
M.S. (Master of Science)
Legacy Department
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Abstract
Robotic swarms provide a scalable and robust solution for monitoring large environments. In this context, the inclusion of a human has the potential advantage of incorporating prior knowledge about the target location or dynamics, thus increasing the overall efficiency of the task at hand. This is especially critical when dealing with time-intensive missions such as search and rescue. In this thesis we develop a general information-theoretic framework to control multiple autonomous robots in search and rescue missions that include a human teleoperator. Human prior knowledge is modeled to capture target location and dynamics, and a mutual information based control is formulated to let autonomous robots weight between two strategies: independent search or staying in proximity of a reference robot representing human input. The control actions optimize a weighted sum of normalized mutual information calculated using particle filtered estimates of the target and the reference robot. We implement the framework to simulate two widely different scenarios designed after search and rescue missions from literature and incorporate varying levels of accuracy in human prior knowledge. Our results indicate that within the simulated environments, mission performance depends on how robots weight between the two strategies, with the amount of the optimal control effort shared between strategies affected by prior knowledge and number of robots. The proposed information-theoretic abstraction of human robot interaction can be implemented on a wide variety of scenarios and the results highlight the role of human prior knowledge towards eliciting effective robotic assistance in time-intensive missions.
To help better understand how humans solve the search and rescue problem and the effect of prior knowledge about environment and target location, we next conduct a human-subjects study where participants teleoperate a ground robot as they search for a missing target with varying levels of prior knowledge about target location and environmental map. Our preliminary experimental results indicate that prior knowledge affects not only the time to find the missing target but also the teleoperation behavior with significant differences in robot speed and control actions made by a participant. The experimental data set and the preliminary results set the stage for a data-driven dynamic model of a human teleoperator in search operations.
Recommended Citation
Krzysiak, Rafal David, "Human-aware information-theoretic control of robotic swarms" (2021). Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations. 7273.
https://huskiecommons.lib.niu.edu/allgraduate-thesesdissertations/7273
Extent
97 pages
Language
eng
Publisher
Northern Illinois University
Rights Statement
In Copyright
Rights Statement 2
NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.
Media Type
Text
