Post by Stephanie Soquet

Influence of Autonomy and Interfaces on Human and Multi-Robot Teams: a Study on Planetary Exploration. Abstract :"Advances in robotic autonomy and interfaces have transformed human-robot teaming across domains, from disaster responseto planetary science. However, critical gaps remain in understanding how autonomy and interface design affect humanperformance and cognitive demands, especially in large-scale, unstructured environments such as those on the Moon or Mars.We present a human-in-the-loop system comprising two (semi-)autonomous robots supervised by a single human operator.The system was evaluated in real caves at Lava Beds National Monument (California) and in a controlled within-subjectstudy (n=38) at Polytechnique Montréal exploring both real and simulated caves. Participants interacted using either atraditional screen interface or a novel real-time, immersive VR interface, developed for this study and field-tested duringNASA’s BRAILLE campaign.We find that continuous physiological measurements (HRV) align with subjective NASA TLX scores in the context ofhuman and multi-robot planetary exploration. Compared to benchmarks from prior studies, the screen interface resultedin low workload, while VR was rated in the low-to-moderate range. The low-autonomy VR-waypoint condition resultedin the least effective performance, with the fewest automated science detections, whereas both the full-autonomy VR andscreen-based conditions yielded comparably higher exploration and detection performance. Both interfaces supported highsituational awareness, with accuracy measures near 90%. Autonomy did not significantly affect situational awareness, butfull-autonomy did reduce operator input effort. Trust levels did not significantly vary across conditions, motivating moredetailed assessment methods in future studies. The results inform how to align interface design and autonomy to supporteffective multi-robot supervision in future missions." Giovanni Beltrame Polytechnique Montréal, Canada Marcel Kaufmann Polytechnique Montréal, Canada, (Now NASA JPL) CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → User studies; Laboratory experiments; Field studies; Virtual reality;Graphical user interfaces; Collaborative interaction.Additional Key Words and Phrases: multi-robot, autonomy, interface, virtual reality, human-robot interaction, user study,workload, situational awareness. ACM, Association for Computing Machinery with support of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), JPL Caltech