Neglect Benevolence in human control of robotic swarms

Robotic swarms are distributed systems whose members interact via local control laws to achieve different behaviors. Practical missions may require a combination of different swarm behaviors, where these behavioral combinations are not known a priori but could arise dynamically due to changes in mission goals. Therefore, human interaction with the swarm (HIS) is needed. In this paper, we introduce, formally define and characterize a novel concept, Neglect Benevolence, that captures the idea that it may be beneficial for system performance if the human operator, after giving a command, waits for some time before giving a subsequent command to the swarm. This raises the important question of the existence and means of calculation of the optimal time for the operator to give input to the swarm in order to optimize swarm behavior. Human operators are limited in their ability to estimate the best time to give input to the swarm. Therefore, automated aids that calculate the optimal input time could help the human operator achieve the best system performance. Our contributions are as follows. First, we formally define the new notion of Neglect Benevolence. Second, we prove the existence of Neglect Benevolence for a class of linear dynamical systems. Third, we provide an analytic characterization and an algorithm for calculating the optimal input time. Fourth, we apply the analysis to the human control of swarm configuration.