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Type of Talk: UTCS Colloquium/AI

Speaker/ Affiliation: Robin R. Murphy/Texas A&M University

Date/Time: Friday, December 4, 2009, 11:00 a.m.

Location: ACES 2.302

Host: Peter Stone

Talk Title: Remote Presence: Autonomy Can Be Shared (or Blamed)

Talk Abstract:
This talk describes a spectrum of three models of
teleoperation for remote presence applications, such as
emergency response, law enforcement, and military operations
in urban terrain, where humans use a robot to obtain
real-time perception at a distance. These enterprises are
treated as joint cognitive systems and examined in terms of
roles, information flow, and team processes. The state of the
practice, where the robot has no autonomy, is captured by the
Remote Tool Model. The Taskable Agent Model, where the robot
has full autonomy and human involvement is negligible
represents the other extreme of the spectrum but is not a
desirable goal for remote presence applications. A third
novel model occupying the space between the two extremes is
posited, the Shared Roles Model, which incorporates
semi-autonomy and increased communications connectivity.
Shared roles provide a naturalistic, explicit representation
of the requisite responsibilities and whether the division of
functions between the robot and human conserves those
responsibilities. The talk discusses whether advances in
technology will obviate the Shared Roles Model, what the
model implies about the human-robot ratio and whether the
ratio can be reduced by merging roles, and identifies open
research issues in team processes.

Speaker Bio:
Robin Roberson Murphy is the Raytheon Professor of Computer
Science and Engineering at Texas A&M. She received a B.M.E.
in mechanical engineering, a M.S. and Ph.D in computer
science in 1980, 1989, and 1992, respectively, from Georgia
Tech, where she was a Rockwell International Doctoral Fellow.
Her research interests are artificial intelligence,
human-robot interaction, and heterogeneous teams of robots.
In 2008, she was awarded the Al Aube Outstanding Contributor
award by the AUVSI Foundation for her insertion of ground,
air, and sea robots for urban search and rescue (US&R) at the
9/11 World Trade Center disaster, Hurricanes Katrina and
Charley, and the Crandall Canyon Utah mine collapse. She is a
Distinguished Speaker for the IEEE Robotics and Automation
Society, and has served on numerous boards, including the
Defense Science Board, USAF SAB, NSF CISE Advisory Council,
and DARPA ISAT.