Tablet Interface for Mine Rescue Robot Control

Summary

I worked with a team of four other students, all with backgrounds in computer science, on a project to create a new interface for controlling a semi-autonomous mine rescue robot, cave crawler. The project began with initial data gathering and exploration and concluded with think-aloud testing of an interface concept using a paper prototype.

Client

Subterranean Robotics Group, Carnegie Mellon University

Time

Fall 2010

Process

After holding a focus setting meeting with stakeholders from our client and the Mine Saftey and Health Administration (MSHA), we conducted research through contextual inquiries and artifact walkthroughs with an MSHA rescue robot operator, a mine rescue competition, robot operators from RedZone Robotics, and an MSHA employee who designs mine rescue competitions. After this initial data gathering was conducted and modeled, we brainstormed interface ideas that fit our research results, and brought them together into an initial paper prototype. We conducted thinkaloud tests using this initial prototype and used CogTool to determine expert performace of tasks in our system. Based on the results, we refined our prototype.