Abstract
Over the last few years, Man-Machine collaborative systems have been increasingly present in daily routines. In these systems, one operator usually controls the machine through explicit commands and assesses the information through a graphical user interface. Direct & implicit interaction between the machine and the user does not exist. This work presents a man-machine symbiotic concept & system where such implicit interaction is possible targeting search and rescue scenarios. Based on measuring physiological variables (e.g. body movement or electrocardiogram) through wearable devices, this system is capable of computing the psycho-physiological state of the human and autonomously identify abnormal situations (e.g. fall or stress). This information is injected into the control loop of the machine that can alter its behavior according to it, enabling an implicit man-machine communication mechanism. A proof of concept of this system was tested at the ARTEX (ARmy Technological EXperimentation) exercise organized by the Portuguese Army involving a military agent and a drone. During this event the soldier was equipped with a kit of wearables that could monitor several physiological variables and automatically detect a fall during a mission. This information was continuously sent to the drone that successfully identified this abnormal situation triggering the take-off and a situation awareness fly-by flight pattern, delivering a first-aid kit to the soldier in case he did not recover after a pre-determined time period. The results were very positive, proving the possibility and feasibility of a symbiotic system between humans and machines.
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This work is financed by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT - Fundac̨ão para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, within project LA/P/0063/2020. The group also thanks the Portuguese Army and the CEMTEX group for organizing the ARTEX event and all the support during the experiment days. The authors would also like to acknowledge and thank the contribution of Prof. Bob Iannucci (Carnegie-Mellon University and Google inc.) for his seminal contributions to the early stages of the Man-Machine Symbiosis Concept.
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Minhoto, V. et al. (2024). Man-Machine Symbiosis UAV Integration for Military Search and Rescue Operations. In: Marques, L., Santos, C., Lima, J.L., Tardioli, D., Ferre, M. (eds) Robot 2023: Sixth Iberian Robotics Conference. ROBOT 2023. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 978. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-59167-9_19
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