Despite their advantages in hazardous environments, their general acceptance in other less dangerous domains has not been apparent and, even in dangerous environments, robots are often viewed as a вЂњlast-possible choice.вЂќ In order to increase the utility and acceptance of robots in hazardous domains researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory have both developed and tested novel mixed-initiative solutions that support the human-robot interactions. Mobile robots are increasingly used in dangerous domains, because they can keep humans out of harmвЂ™s way. This paper discusses these issues and reports on experiments underway intelligence residing on the robot to enhance emergency response. Specifically, increasing the range of higher level robot behaviors such as autonomous navigation and mapping, evolving new abstractions for sensor and control data, and developing metaphors for operator control have the potential to improve state-of-the-art in incident response. Recent work at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) on expanding robot capability has the potential to improve human-system response during disaster management and recovery. While robotic assistance is postulated to reduce workload and exposure, limitations associated with communications and the robotвЂ™s ability to act independently have served moreВ В» to limit reliability and reduce our potential to exploit human вЂ“robotic interaction and efficacy of response. Many incident response scenarios call for multiple, complex procedure-based activities performed by personnel wearing cumbersome personal protective equipment (PPE) and operating under high levels of stress and workload. While teams are expected to do well, data from other domains suggests that the timeliness and accuracy associated with incident response can be improved through collaborative human-robotic interaction. Preparedness for chemical, biological, and radiological/nuclear incidents at nuclear power plants (NPPs) includes the deployment of well trained emergency response teams.

Furthermore, we illustrate how recognition of moreВ В» problems in human-robot interactions can drive the creation of new metaphors for design and how human factors lessons in usability, human performance, and our social contract with technology have the potential for enormous payoff in terms of establishing effective, user-friendly robot systems when appropriate metaphors are used. This paper reports our development of new metaphors that support increased robot complexity without passing the complexity of the interaction onto the operator. Although autonomy has the potential to reduce overall workload, the use of robot behaviors often increased the complexity of the underlying interaction metaphor. This paper provides evidence that the interaction methods used alongside these behaviors may not provide a mental model that can be easily adopted or used by operators. В«В lessДЄutonomous behaviors created by the research and development community are not being extensively utilized within energy, defense, security, or industrial contexts.

This report addresses the issues and development of command and control for largescale numbers of autonomous robots deployed as a collective force. If a herd of sheep is comparable to the collective of robots, then the human element is comparable to the shepherd pulling in strays and guiding the herd in the direction of greener pastures. Tele-operation should not be the goal, but rather a level of adjustable autonomy and high-level control. In moving from research studies to the practical deployment of large-scale numbers of robots, one of critical pieces that must be explored moreВ В» is the command and control architecture for humans to re-task and also inject global knowledge, experience, and intuition into the force. While these systems are envisioned as maintaining a high degree of autonomy, it is important to understand the relationship of man with such machines. Such organizations have been compared to schools of fish, flocks of birds, herds of animals, swarms of insects, and military squadrons. = ,ДЄdvances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and micro-technologies will soon give rise to production of large-scale forces of autonomous micro-robots with systems of innate behaviors and with capabilities of self-organization and real world tasking.

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