A study of human performance in a cooperative local navigation robotic system

This paper presents a study on human performance when people are assisted by a purely reactive navigation control system. The goal of such a system is to achieve collaborative human/robot navigation, so that the human driver is always in control but his/her performance is improved by the machine. This Shared Control approach is meant to be implemented on a power robotic wheelchair, so it is important that the human feels in control and safe all the time despite any potential control error caused by disability. Human and robots inputs are continuously mixed and weighted by local efficiency factors to generate an emergent behaviour in a mobile robot. Technical, medical,psychological and ergonomic issues are treated. Tests with a Pioneer AT robot driven by volunteers are finally presented, along with results and analysis.