EEG Characteristics of Interruption Recovery Across Unmanned Swarm Control Tasks

In unmanned swarm control, interruptions can disrupt operators’ task-state representations and make resumption difficult. This within-subject study examined electroencephalographic (EEG) responses across four interrupted swarm-control tasks: search, reconnaissance, obstacle clearance, and planning. Twenty participants completed all task conditions. Power spectral density (PSD) analyses showed task-dependent differences in alpha, theta, and beta activity during primary-task performance. Obstacle clearance showed lower occipital alpha power than search and lower frontal theta power than the other three tasks, whereas search showed higher frontal beta power than reconnaissance, obstacle clearance, and planning. Descriptive event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) patterns during early resumption suggested different recovery operations across tasks: visual reorientation in search and obstacle clearance, memory retrieval in reconnaissance, and sustained executive control in planning. These findings suggest that resumption aids should be matched to the information operators need to restore after interruption.