Variable Autonomy for Human-Robot Teaming

About this Research Topic

Background

As robots are introduced to various domains and applications, Human-Robot Teaming (HRT) capabilities are essential. Such capabilities involve teaming with humans in, on, or out-the-loop at different levels of abstraction, leveraging the complementing capabilities of humans and robots. This requires robotic systems with the ability to dynamically vary their level or degree of autonomy to collaborate with the human(s) efficiently and overcome various challenging circumstances. Variable Autonomy (VA) encompasses such research, including but not limited to shared control and shared autonomy, mixed-initiative, adjustable autonomy, sliding autonomy, and adaptive automation.

A complete Variable Autonomy human-robot system benefits from research in various fields as it needs to tackle a plethora of challenges. Such challenges include: planning and decision-making (including determining the appropriate level of decision making), control, interfaces, modelling of human behaviour and motion (including human intent), human factors (for example, cognitive workload, situation awareness, and experience), and autonomous capabilities such as perception, navigation, manipulation, mapping and exploration. This collection is driven by the timely need to bring together Variable Autonomy-related research and practices often disconnected across different communities as the field is relatively young. The collection’s goal is to consolidate research in Variable Autonomy.

To this end, and given the complexity and span of Variable Autonomy Human-Robot systems, we welcome contributions to all aspects of Variable Autonomy. Some indicative examples (but not limited to):
- Variable Autonomy paradigms and arbitration methods for Human-Robot Teaming and HRI (including shared control and shared autonomy, mixed-initiative, human-initiative, adaptable/adaptive autonomy etc.)
- Trustworthy Variable Autonomy, Human-Robot Teaming and HRI
- Transparency and explainability of AI in HRI, Human-Robot Teaming, and Variable Autonomy
- Human Factors and human experience
- Modelling of human behaviour, intent, and trust in the system
- Situation awareness for context-dependent Human-Robot
- Interfaces for Variable Autonomy and Human-Robot Teaming
- Practical work/experiments with Variable Autonomy robotic systems
- Integration work in which different Variable Autonomy components are integrated and the Variable Autonomy robotic system is tested in systematic experiments.

This Research Topic is linked with the Variable Autonomy for human-robot Teaming (VAT) workshop at the 18th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2023) in Stockholm Sweden. Any contributions presented at the workshop must be extended to contain 30% original content. However, this Research Topic welcomes relevant contributions that were not presented at the workshop.

Keywords: Variable Autonomy, Shared Control, Human-Robot Teaming, Human-Robot Interaction, Mixed-Initiative, Human-Initiative, Shared Autonomy, Human-Machine Cooperation

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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