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The objective of this review is to extract design implications from multiyear US Army sponsored research investigating humans and autonomy. The programs covered diverse research paradigms: (a) effects of autonomy related to pedestrian safety during urban robotic missions, (b) supervision of multiple semi-autonomous robots assisted by an intelligent agent, (c) field investigations of advanced interfaces for hands- free and heads- up supervision of robots for dismounted missions and also investigations of telepresence, (d) effects of haptic control and stereovision for exploiting improvised explosive devices. Thirteen general design guidelines related to mixed initiative systems, pedestrian safety, telepresence, voice control and stereovision/haptic control are discussed.

Extensive US Army programs are being pursued to increase the effectiveness of unmanned vehicles for diverse missions during future combat. The following paper identified 23 human-robot interaction (HRI) guidelines related to interface design, procedural issues, individual differences and training implications based on three HRI research programs. The programs range from simulation experiments that investigated robot control in a multitasking environment from a mounted combat vehicle, to reconnaissance missions in a miniature Iraqi city that focused on Soldier-robot teaming relationships, to field studies at Ft. Benning that examined interface design issues for Soldiers supervising or controlling small robots.

In this paper we discuss plans initiated to develop and evaluate multisensory displays (i.e. visual, haptic, tactile) to support dismounted (i.e., not in vehicle) Soldier movement, communication, and targeting. Human factors studies of an array of military operational roles have shown significant demand for focal visual attention that diminishes the capacity for task-sharing and attention allocation, especially in the context of unexpected changes and events. If other sensory modalities can be effectively used in a military environment, the benefit could be significant in increasing survivability, information flow, and mission achievement. We discuss operational task demands and two efforts supported from a 2010 SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) topic.

The literature is replete with studies that investigated the effectiveness of vibrotactile displays; however, individual studies in this area often yield discrepant findings that are difficult to synthesize. In this paper, we provide an overview of a comprehensive review of the literature and meta-analyses that organized studies to enable comparisons of visual and tactile presentations of information, to yield information useful to researchers and designers. Over six hundred studies were initially reviewed and coded along numerous criteria that determined appropriateness for meta-analysis categories. Comparisons were made between conditions that compared (a) adding a tactile cue to a baseline condition, (b) a visual cue with a multimodal (visual and tactile) presentation, and (c) a visual cue with a tactile cue. In addition, we further categorized within these comparisons with regard to type of information, that ranged from simple alerts and single direction cues to more complex tactile patterns representing spatial orientation or short communications.