Designing interfaces for multi-user, multi-robot systems

The use of autonomous robots in organizations is expected to increase steadily over the next few decades. Although some empirical work exists that examines how people collaborate with robots, little is known about how to best design interfaces to support operators in understanding aspects of the task or tasks at hand. This paper presents a design investigation to understand how interfaces should be designed to support multi-user, multi-robot teams. Through contextual inquiry, concept generation, and concept evaluation, we determine what operators should see, and with what salience different types of information should be presented. We present our findings through a series of design questions that development teams can use to help define interaction and design interfaces for these systems.