HORUS: A Mixed Reality Interface for Managing Teams of Mobile Robots

TL;DR

HORUS is a novel Mixed Reality interface designed to enhance the management and coordination of multiple mobile robots, providing real-time visualization, task assignment, and teleoperation modes to improve multi-robot teamwork.

Contribution

This paper introduces HORUS, a comprehensive MR interface specifically tailored for managing teams of mobile robots, filling a gap in multi-robot control research.

Findings

HORUS effectively supports multi-robot management in search and rescue scenarios.

Participants demonstrated improved coordination and control using HORUS compared to traditional methods.

The interface's versatility enhances human-robot collaboration in dynamic environments.

Abstract

Mixed Reality (MR) interfaces have been extensively explored for controlling mobile robots, but there is limited research on their application to managing teams of robots. This paper presents HORUS: Holistic Operational Reality for Unified Systems, a Mixed Reality interface offering a comprehensive set of tools for managing multiple mobile robots simultaneously. HORUS enables operators to monitor individual robot statuses, visualize sensor data projected in real time, and assign tasks to single robots, subsets of the team, or the entire group, all from a Mini-Map (Ground Station). The interface also provides different teleoperation modes: a mini-map mode that allows teleoperation while observing the robot model and its transform on the mini-map, and a semi-immersive mode that offers a flat, screen-like view in either single or stereo view (3D). We conducted a user study in which participants used HORUS to manage a team of mobile robots tasked with finding clues in an environment, simulating search and rescue tasks. This study compared HORUS's full-team management capabilities with individual robot teleoperation. The experiments validated the versatility and effectiveness of HORUS in multi-robot coordination, demonstrating its potential to advance human-robot collaboration in dynamic, team-based environments.