Masters Theses

Abstract

"This study shows that appropriate human interaction can benefit a swarm of robots to reach to goal more efficiently. The common belief in swarm robotics that user intervention adversely affects intelligence of the swarm is studied carefully to show that the traditional human-robot interaction approaches are not suitable for human swarm interaction. A set of desirable features for human swarm interaction is identified and an interaction architecture is proposed that has all of the desirable features. A swarm simulation environment is then created that allows simulating a swarm behavior in an indoor environment. Three different applications of the swarm are explored: radiation source search and localization, exploring unknown environment, and search and rescue. Different swarm intelligence algorithms have been used for each application. Particle swarm optimization is used for radiation source localization; pheromone based stigmergy is applied for unknown environment exploration, and ant inspired collaboration algorithm is used in the search and rescue application to synchronize the robot behaviors. In each application, the emergence of intelligence is observed that enables the swarm to complete the mission without user input. Proposed human swarm interaction is then integrated in a simulation environment and a user evaluation experiment is conducted. Participants are introduced to the interaction tool and asked to deploy the swarm to complete three different missions. The performance comparison of the user guided swarm to that of the autonomous swarm shows that the user guided swarm is more efficient in achieving the goals and the result is better in qualitative terms as well. The results clearly indicate that the proposed interaction helped the swarm achieve emergence rather than adversely affecting it"--Abstract, page iii.

Advisor(s)

Venayagamoorthy, Ganesh K.

Committee Member(s)

Stanley, R. Joe
Leu, M. C. (Ming-Chuan)

Department(s)

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Degree Name

M.S. in Computer Engineering

Sponsor(s)

National Science Foundation (U.S.)

Publisher

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Publication Date

Summer 2008

Pagination

xi, 65 pages

Note about bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 62-64).

Rights

© 2008 Shishir Bashyal, All rights reserved.

Document Type

Thesis - Open Access

File Type

text

Language

English

Subject Headings

Human-computer interaction -- Case studiesMobile robotsSocial interactionSwarm intelligence

Thesis Number

T 9877

Print OCLC #

785612686

Electronic OCLC #

905546611

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