Comparing the usability of RoboFlag interface alternatives

The RoboFlag system was designed as a testbed to study distributed control of multiple vehicle teams with humans in the loop. This work analyzed the RoboFlag version 2.0 interface to identify usability issues. The existing interface was modified to create two new interfaces. The first interface focused on improved usability, while the second focused on improved situation awareness. A user evaluation was conducted to determine if both new interfaces improved the system usability over the original interface. Twenty-four participants completed the evaluation. This paper reports the design considerations, the experimental apparatus, and the usability based statistical analysis. The results indicate that both new interfaces provide improved usability over the RoboFlag version 2.0 interface.