A visualization framework for bounding physical activities - Towards a quantification of gibsonian-based fields

In a human-robot communications problem in which a mobile robot and an astronaut are required to work together to maintain network communication, it is possible for the mobile robot and the astronaut to have multiple courses of actions to restore communications if it becomes disrupted. To effectively accomplish a team's mission, a human supervisor responsible for monitoring and supervising the terrestrial activities of mobile robots and astronauts in this domain needs useful decision aiding tools in order to identify productive courses of action. Motivated by this, we propose a visualization framework based on Gibsonian-based fields for representing a mobile robot and an astronaut's possible action strategies to maintain their network communication in a continuous and dynamic environment and for graphically representing bounds on actualized action strategies of the robot and the astronaut based on their possible action strategies. The authors submit that it is not sufficient simply to calculate all the possible actions of the mobile robot and the astronaut. It is equally important to provide interfaces that reveal affordances in the domain in a manner that delineates the length and breadth of action opportunities and human perceptual and physical capabilities. We present a simple conceptualization of the problem of robot-astronaut communication in order to develop a framework for analysis that can be generalized to multiple robots and astronauts communicating to meet multiple objectives.