Supporting situation awareness through robot-to-human information exchanges under conditions of visuospatial perspective taking

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to test the effects of robot-to-human information exchanges on the development of human situation awareness under differing levels of visuospatial perspective taking and the effect of situation awareness on the quality of human assistance provided to a robot. Fifty-six male participants with ages ranging from 18 to 29 (M = 18.89, SD = 3.41) were included in the analysis of the results. The results showed that if robots can increasingly support a human's understanding of when assistance is needed, they will be better able to provide that assistance. When spatial information was added to robot-to-human information exchanges, representing that spatial information in global-relative reference frames was more beneficial than representing that information in reference to the human's view of the environment.