The importance of trust between operator and AUV: Crossing the human/computer language barrier

AUVs have many advantages over traditional remote presence systems, but their autonomy introduces problems of its own. A deficit in trust may arise between the operator and an AUV which is able to modify its own plan and potentially behave in a not observably deterministic fashion. There have been some notable previous attempts to bring the plan used in an autonomous system closer to the user, but AUVs represent a relatively new technology which operates in a particular and limited domain for which this infrastructure does not yet exist. Here we present a framework to bring state and purpose of the mission as close to the user as possible. Natural language and high level graphics, which take influence from computer games in order to engender familiarity, are used as as key components of both the input and output of our suggested plan creation system. This allows the user to satisfy themselves of the validity of a plan and the competence of the system before it is run on a real AUV. © 2007 IEEE.