Search and Rescue (SAR) operations are necessary during times of natural disaster or when individuals go missing. These missions mobilize individuals, both paid and volunteer, to find lost persons and are often carried out in treacherous areas. It is important for teammates to be focused and prepared. Specifically, the search coordinator's role and the head of command directing their teammates is vital to the outcome of a SAR mission. Their workload is significant, however, inviting the opportunity for autonomy to work in tandem with the search coordinator to ensure optimal, timely decisions are made for task scheduling. There has been a significant amount of investigation into task scheduling for human-autonomy teams, but there is a gap in the ordering methods used. One possible framework to investigate uses Rasmussen's SRK framework to classify individual responses to assigned tasks.
There is also a significant body of work on this framework, but very little in a proactive task scheduling context.
This thesis proposes a new approach to task scheduling utilizing Rasmussen's SRK framework. Scheduling tasks in this manner allows the characteristics of the tasks themselves to be considered as well as a more streamlined approach to reducing overall cognitive load for SAR teammates. An experimental study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of the proposed task scheduling methods based on the SRK framework. Initial results suggest there is an impact on scheduling tasks with respect to SRK, but further investigation is warranted to determine more specific factors. / Master of Science / Search and Rescue (SAR) operations are necessary during times of natural disaster or when individuals go missing. These missions mobilize individuals, both paid and volunteer, to find lost persons and are often carried out in treacherous areas. It is important for teammates to be focused and prepared. Specifically, the search coordinator's role and the head of command directing their teammates is vital to the outcome of a SAR mission. They have a significant number of responsibilities, however, inviting the potential for becoming overloaded with information and decisions. This does, however, suggest a significant opportunity for autonomy to work in tandem with the search coordinator to ensure optimal, timely decisions are made for task scheduling. There has been a significant amount of investigation into task scheduling for human-autonomy teams, but there is a gap in the ordering methods used. One possible framework to use to fill this gap is Rasmussen's Skill-Rule-Knowledge (SRK) framework to categorize and predict how individuals will respond to their assigned tasks. There is also a significant body of work on this framework, but very little in a proactive task scheduling context.
This thesis proposes a new approach to task scheduling utilizing Rasmussen's SRK framework. Scheduling tasks in this manner allows the characteristics of the tasks themselves to be considered. In addition, the possibility of overwhelming SAR team members can be reduced by scheduling tasks intelligently. An experimental study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of the proposed task scheduling methods based on the SRK framework. Initial results suggest there is an impact on scheduling tasks with respect to SRK, but further investigation is warranted to determine more specific factors.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/119333 |
| Date | 06 June 2024 |
| Creators | Badger, Madeline Victoria |
| Contributors | Electrical and Computer Engineering, Williams, Ryan K., Lau, Nathan Ka Ching, Doan, Thinh Thanh |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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