Design of a trusted shift of Coordination Forms: Supporting Collaboration to handle future non-human intelligent collaborators (NICs)

Abstract

We introduce principles for designing collaboration among special operation forces (SOF) and future non-human intelligent collaborators (NICs), focusing on interdependence and emergent dynamics of workflow. We discuss a dynamic mixed-initiative human-autonomy teaming (HAT) coordination concept, where multiple military SOF teams collaborate together with autonomous capabilities. We argue that effective tactical actions requires shift of coordination forms, i.e. who is enacting coordination functions, which in military command and control (C2) terminology is formalized as coordination authority. Coordination forms could shift according to a set of requirements and we discuss how to elicit experiences of such coordination from simulated missions where human teammates and/or NICs have had to make choices of coordination form. We formulate a set of hypotheses remaining to be empirically analyzed. We draw on collaboration research investigating socio-technical systems where machine teammates collaborate with human teammates to achieve a common goal.