The Evolutionary Role of Humans in the Human-Robot System

Future human-robot systems are expected to show increasing capabilities, flexibility and levels of machine autonomy. Current systems include manufacturing robots which operate with little human intervention once they have been programmed. Teleoperators generally require continuous human control and achieve flexibility in the face of changing task requirements and environmental conditions. Human control tasks in teleoperated mobility and/or manipulator systems are often quite demanding in terms of workload and operator time. An objective of the future development of human-robot systems is incorporation of technologies such as artificial intelligence, world modeling, machine pattern recognition and automated task planning to permit increased robot autonomy and reduced human operator demands. Stages of human-robot capability were identified and criticalities of certain generic human operator functions were estimated for the capability stages. The resulting profile defines the changing role of the human operator throughout development of the capability stages. This information has implications for human factors research and development in the human-robot systems area.