Mediating Human-Swarm Interactions Through a Robot Helper: A Shepherding-Inspired Approach

Abstract

This work investigates human-swarm interaction (HSI) for steering large collectives through an intermediary robot helper. While prior robot-swarm control and HSI techniques commonly assume swarm members are addressable, these assumptions often fail for ``ungovernable'' swarms such as wildlife flocks and schools of fish. Motivated by pastoral shepherding, we compare low-level teleoperation to a higher-autonomy motion-primitives interface in a virtual reality (VR) shepherding task under varied swarm cohesion dynamics. Results indicate that motion primitives that operate on collective shape (e.g., boundary-based control) improve task performance and reduce perceived workload.