Human-Swarm Interaction as Shared Control: Achieving Flexible Fault-Tolerant Systems

Robot swarms modeled after hub-based colonies, such as ants and bees, potentially offer fault-tolerant capabilities at very favorable cost margins. However, relatively little is known about how to harness the potential of these swarms through command-and-control systems. In this paper, we study how to merge operator input with the underlying swarm behavior to maintain the fault-tolerant attributes of robot swarms while providing the operator with enough control to ensure that mission objectives are accomplished. We advocate that an effective mechanism for achieving this is shared control, wherein decision-making is shared between the human operator and the underlying swarm dynamics. We lay out characteristics of human-swarm systems that provide an effective balance between fault-tolerance and control, and we discuss preliminary designs of human-swarm systems for hub-based colonies based on these principles.