Joshua Hamell

Smart Information Flow Technologies (United States)

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Joshua Hamell is a robotics researcher whose work confronts one of the most pressing challenges in human-robot teaming: the scalability of human supervision over large, heterogeneous robot swarms. His primary research areas include swarm robotics, human-robot interaction, and multi-agent systems, with a specific focus on cognitive workload and supervisory control. Hamell’s major contribution lies in empirically testing the limits of human cognition when overseeing up to 100 diverse robots operating in real-world environments—a question long considered open in the field. His most-cited work, a 2023 study (6 citations), directly addresses whether a single human can manage such a swarm without being overwhelmed, leveraging insights from DARPA’s OFFe program. A follow-up 2024 paper (2 citations) refines these findings, further exploring the boundary conditions of human supervisory capacity. Though early in his citation trajectory, Hamell’s research has immediate implications for defense, disaster response, and industrial automation, where deploying large, heterogeneous robot teams is increasingly viable. His work is essential reading for students and researchers interested in the practical limits of human-swarm interaction and the design of future supervisory interfaces.