Arbitration of cooperative movement for highly-automated human machine systems

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Frank O. Flemisch
• Subject Area: Human Factors, Ergonomics, Human-Machine Systems
• Term: from 2014 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 252365535

Movement is an important skill of many living creatures, especially of humans. This skill is not only physical: it is always connected to cognitive processes, especially when living creatures move competitively and/or cooperatively, e.g. during hunting. The unification of different intentions to a joint motion using near-term negotiation (arbitration) is an important aspect of cooperative movement. An example from real-life is the cooperative movement of parents and children where different skills and authority levels exist and where arbitration can be carried out on all interaction channels until a common path is cooperatively followed. With increasing automation, arbitration of movement becomes more and more relevant for human machine systems, e.g. for highly automated vehicles, aircraft and robots. Not only intensity, direction and course of movement are arbitrated, but also the distribution of control that in turn is coupled tightly with the distribution of abilities, authority and responsibility between humans and automation. The main goal of this project is the development of robust and intuitively, cross-domain understandable arbitration patterns that can be employed safely.Starting point of the project are efficient explorations in natural domains of cooperative guidance of motion, like the motion of pedestrians, cyclists and car drivers, but also excursions in non-technical domains like ballroom dancing and Aikido. From these explorations a design space of movement arbitration will be stretched and participatively explored with users. Prototypes of interaction patterns will be examined in terms of usability, performance, workload, situation awareness and error. In order to examine the transferability in the domains road vehicle, aircraft and cooperative guidance of a robot or robotic arm, the arbitration patterns will be implemented in simulator prototypes and a simple aircraft, experimentally validated and documented in an online catalogue of arbitration and design patterns for movement.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants