Use of cross-training in human–robot collaborative rescue

Human–robot collaboration has been widely used in postdisaster investigation and rescue. Human–robot team training is a good way to improve the team rescue efficiency and safety; two common training methods, namely, procedural training and cross-training, are explored in this study. Currently, relatively few studies have explored the impact of cross-training on human–robot collaboration in rescue tasks. Cross-training will be novel to most rescuers and as such, an evaluation of cross-training in comparison with more conventional procedural training is warranted. This study investigated the effects of these two training methods on rescue performance, situation awareness and workload. Forty-two participants completed a path-planning and a photo-taking task in an unfamiliar simulated postdisaster environment. The rescue performance results showed that cross-training method had significant advantages over procedural training for human–robot collaborative rescue tasks. During the training process, compared with procedural training, participants were more likely to achieve excellent photo-taking performance after cross-training; after training, the length of the route planned by the cross-training group was significantly shorter than that of the procedural-training group. In addition, procedural-training marginal significantly increased the emotion demand, which proves that cross-training can well control the emotions of the operators and make them more involved in the rescue task. The study also found that arousal level increased significantly after the first cross-training session, and decreased to the same level as procedural training after multiple sessions. These results contribute to the application of cross-training in human–robot collaborative rescue teams.