Predictive Model for Human-Unmanned Vehicle Systems

The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Advances in automation are making it possible for a single operator to control multiple unmanned vehicles (UVs). However, the complex nature of these teams presents a difficult and exciting challenge for designers of human-UV systems. To build such systems effectively , models must be developed that describe the behavior of the human-UV team and that predict how alterations in team composition and system design will affect the system's overall performance. In this paper, we present a method for modeling human-UV systems consisting of a single operator and multiple independent UVs. Via a case study, we demonstrate that the resulting models provide an accurate description of observed human-UV systems. Additionally, we demonstrate that the models can be used to predict how changes in the human-UV interface and the UVs' autonomy alter the system's performance.