Effects of Human-Swarm Interaction on Subjective Time Perception: Swarm Size and Speed

Many large-scale multi-robot systems require human input during operation in different applications. To still minimize the human effort, interaction is intermittent or restricted to a subset of robots. Despite this reduced demand for human interaction, the mental load and stress can be challenging for the human operator. A specific effect of human-swarm interaction may be a hypothesized change of subjective time perception in the human operator. In a series of simple human-swarm interaction experiments with robot swarms of up to 15 physical robots, we study whether human operators have altered time perception due to the number of controlled robots or robot speeds. Using data gathered by questionnaires, we found that increased swarm size shrinks perceived time and decreased robot speeds expand the perceived time. We introduce the concept of subjective time perception to human-swarm interaction. Future research will enable swarm systems to autonomously modulate subjective timing to ease the job of human operators.