The Effects of Agent Transparency on Human Interaction with an Autonomous Robotic Agent

Abstract

We use the Situation awareness-based Agent Transparency model as a framework to design a user interface to support agent transparency. Participants were instructed to supervise an autonomous robotic agent as it traversed simulated urban environments. During this task, participants were exposed to one of three levels of information used to support agent transparency in the interface display. Our findings suggest that providing agent transparency information allows operators to properly calibrate trust without excess workload. Though, increased agent transparency information did not support operator situation awareness.