A Framework for Supporting Teamwork between Humans and Autonomous Systems

Abstract

The US Army's vision of future warfare includes command and control (C2) of multiple manned and uninhabited assets in parallel. Central to this vision are human-robotic teams, in which uninhabited assets and human warfighters operate in a coordinated fashion toward shared objectives. Effective C2 will require user interface controls that allow an operator to integrate all types of elements in these heterogeneous teams in support of effective coordinated tactics and procedures. The Intelligent Control Framework (ICF) project at Soar Technology is exploring issues related to the design and development of operator interfaces for C2 of manned and uninhabited assets. We are presently focused on aspects of teamwork related to collaborative planning. In this context, the ICF architecture forms a communicative substrate for human-system negotiation about task responsibilities and levels of autonomy among assets. This paper describes three tiers of collaboration that need to be supported in such C2 interfaces and the system intelligence required to support those tiers. We describe our implementation of an Adjustable Autonomy Module (AAM) as a partial fulfillment of these reasoning requirements within the ICF system, and use the three tiers to discuss lessons we have learned concerning interaction design to support operator system communication about plans and asset autonomy.