ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Robot. AI
Sec. Field Robotics
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frobt.2025.1526287
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancing Communication Models for Intelligent Multi-Robot and Human-Robot InteractionsView all articles
Should we get involved? Impact of Human Collaboration and Intervention on Multi-Robot Teams
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
- 2Bristol Robotics Laboratory, Bristol, England, United Kingdom
- 3Kempten University of Applied Sciences, Kempten, Germany
- 4University of the West of England, Bristol, England, United Kingdom
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The challenges encountered in the design of multi-robot teams (MRT) highlight the need for different levels of human involvement, creating human-in-the-loop multi-robot teams. By integrating human cognitive abilities with the functionalities of the robots in the MRT, we can enhance overall system performance. Designing such a human-in-the-loop MRT requires several decisions based on the specific context of application. Before implementing these systems in real-world scenarios, it is essential to model and simulate the various components of the MRT to evaluate their impact on performance and the different roles a human operator might play. We developed a simulation framework for a human-in-the-loop MRT using the Java Agent DEvelopment framework (JADE) and investigated the effects of different numbers of robots in the MRT, MRT architectures, and levels of human involvement (human collaboration and human intervention) on performance metrics. Results show that task execution outcomes and request completion times (RCT) improve with an increasing number of robots in the MRT. Human collaboration reduced the RCT, while human intervention increased the RCT, regardless of the number of robots in the MRT. The effect of system architecture was only significant when the number of robots in the MRT was low.
Keywords: multi-agent systems, simulation, Centralised architecture, decentralised architecture, Human collaboration, Human intervention, human-in-the-loop, Multi-robot teams
Received: 11 Nov 2024; Accepted: 05 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bolarinwa, Giuliani and Bremner. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Paul Bremner, Bristol Robotics Laboratory, Bristol, BS16 1QY, England, United Kingdom
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.