Identifying Display Concepts to Support Distributed Collaboration of Unmanned Vehicle Teams

Abstract

Fleets of unmanned vehicles promise to extend human capabilities in many domains, ranging from search and rescue to intelligence gathering. Achieving the promise of unmanned vehicles places a particular demand on coordination, in which operators must allocate and reallocate tasks and resources to meet the needs of the evolving mission. An obvious solution to supporting coordination is to enhance communication. However, traditional verbal and text-based communication could exacerbate the problem by imposing greater load on operators during periods of high workload and by introducing ambiguity that is inherent in natural language. We propose an alternative in which coordination is supported through a shared representation of the work domain constraints and the activity of others. Such an alternative supports implicit communication that often effectively coordinates face-to-face coordination, but is often neglected in computer-mediated coordination. This approach enables stimergy—communication through action on the environment—that makes it possible for coordinated activity to emerge without central control or complex communication. The paper shows how cognitive work analysis leads to display concepts that can support stimergy and reduce the need for explicit communication.