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In the context of human-robot interaction, it is natural to classify humans into two distinct categories, namely users and operators. Human users are those without the specific knowledge regarding the internal operations of a robot but are expected to benefit from using that robot out of the box in a complex environmental setting. On the other hand, human operators are expected to have the basic technical knowledge of a robot's sensory and motor functionalities and be able to manipulate those in order to perform human-robot collective tasks. For both human users and operators, it is essential to have a smooth and effortless interaction with large-scale multi-robot systems operating in the real-world. However, in order to study and develop methods for such human-robot interactions that involve not only complex robotic systems but also a large number of those robots in a huge environment, it becomes impractical to experiment only with real robots. The inhibiting factors include the costs to build a large number of robots and the infeasibility to perform controlled, repeatable experiments in huge, real physical spaces. We aim to address this challenge by using state of the art, ecologically sound and immersive virtual environment and virtual reality (VR) tools and the related expertise available with the department of Human Perception, Cognition and Action in the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics (MPI-KYB) in Tübingen. It will enable us to provide real human users and operators with sensory stimuli originating from their interaction with a team of large number of robots operating inside a virtual environment. Using this technology, we will investigate and model human user and operator behavior, perception and cognition resulting from their interaction with large-scale multi-robot systems. Eventually, to achieve the final goal of this research project, we will use these models to design integrated and scalable multi-robot functionalities to maximize the collective performance of the robot team while maintaining an intuitive, effortless and natural interaction with both human users and operators.
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