The Robosphere: The Conceptual Expansion of the Human Factors

Abstract

A technology of self-sustaining robotic ecologies (called robosphere by the co-author) is likely to emerge in order to prepare for and serve longduration space missions of humans on Mars or in other extraterrestrial environments. The emergence of this would necessarily expand the concept of the human factors. The human-human, humantechnology, and human-environment human factors interfaces would be joined by the technologytechnology, or machine-machine, interface, in the sense that machines would need to interact and cooperate for types of activities that, until now, would invariably involve humans.