A Model for Tacit Communication in Collaborative Human-UAV Search-and-Rescue

Tacit communication can be exploited in human robot interaction (HRI) scenarios to achieve desirable outcomes. This paper models a particular search and rescue (SAR) scenario as a modified asymmetric rendezvous game, where limited signaling capabilities are present between the two players—rescuer and rescuee. We model our situation as a co-operative Stackelberg signaling game, where the rescuer acts as a leader in signaling its intent to the rescuee. We present an efficient game-theoretic approach to obtain the optimal signaling policy to be employed by the rescuer. We then robustify this approach to uncertainties in the rescue topology and deviations in rescuee behavior. The paper thus introduces a game-theoretic framework to model an HRI scenario with implicit communication capacity.