Abstract
For human operators to have effective supervisory control over a robot’s waypoint navigation in close proximity, the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) system must support the operator’s ability to designate spatial locations for the robot to move to. Currently, the common approach uses remote controllers and touchscreens as the means to communicate between humans and robots. This reduces the operator’s Situational Awareness (SA) and puts his/her safety within a hostile environment at significant risk due to the workload required to operate the robot. This thesis proposes a new concept of a HRI system to designate waypoints for robot navigation when operating within a military context. We investigate the pain points of current military HRI and emulate design elements found in state-of-the-art research into robot waypoint designation. The prototype Waypoint Designation System (WDS) seeks to be a lightweight and intuitive system for soldier operators to use. It adopts a ‘Point and Click’ mode of operation: the user aims the HRI device towards a certain direction, chooses the desired distance, and sends the designated waypoint at the push of a button. The robot receives the waypoint coordinates and navigates to it. An empirical study was conducted (81 waypoints in total) to measure system accuracy and to calibrate the system by means of linear regression analysis. The results of the experiments suggest that the calibrated system is appropriately accurate (within ±0.25m) to be used in the context of urban operations