M. L. Cummings

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

M. L. Cummings is a pioneering researcher in human-autonomy teaming, with a focus on trust dynamics and multi-robot control. Her work investigates how operators interact with and supervise multiple autonomous systems, particularly in high-stakes environments like search and rescue and underwater navigation. A key contribution is her development of a system dynamics model that simulates how operator trust impacts performance when controlling multiple robots—showing that operators often revert to manual control when trust in autonomous planners erodes. This foundational paper has garnered 23 citations and remains influential in human-robot interaction. Cummings also advances the study of multi-operator teamwork, using discrete event simulation to model team structures and attention allocation, reducing the need for costly experiments. Her mixed-methods analysis of trust in risk-aware autonomy, involving 73 participants navigating an underwater robot, further explores how controllability shapes human reliance on autonomous decision-making. With over 50 citations across her most-cited works, Cummings’ research is essential for engineers and designers building effective, trustworthy human-autonomy systems.