This document presents an article describing research conducted as part of the OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) program of the U.S.

The research aimed to study the possibility of one person controlling a real heterogeneous swarm of 100 diverse robots performing complex tasks in urban environments.

The article provides a detailed description of the swarm command and control system (CCAST) developed by the OFFSET program integration team led by Raytheon BBN. The CCAST system includes a heterogeneous swarm of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), as well as a multi-fidelity swarm simulation.

The central element of the system is an immersive interactive interface (I3) based on virtual reality, which allows a single person, called the swarm commander (SC), to control the entire swarm. The I3 interface provides the SC with a three-dimensional visual representation of the environment and robots, as well as tools for interacting with and controlling the swarm.

The article describes in detail the various components of the CCAST system, such as swarm tactics, mission planning, swarm simulation, and their integration with the I3 interface. It also presents a multi-resource workload assessment algorithm used to monitor and evaluate the SC's workload during mission execution.

During the final OFFSET field experiments (FX-6) conducted in November 2021 at Fort Campbell military base, objective and subjective metrics related to the performance of swarm commanders were collected. Analysis of the data using the multi-resource workload assessment algorithm showed that although swarm commanders' workload ratings often exceeded the overload threshold, they were still able to successfully complete missions, often under challenging operational conditions.

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