Improving Reliability Awareness to Support Appropriate Trust and Reliance on Individual Combat Identification Systems

Abstract

Individual combat identification (CID) systems have been developed to help soldiers distinguish friends from foes in combat situations. However, these automated systems are not perfectly reliable. Previous studies have found that participants often do not rely properly on such systems and consequently their identification performance was not improved by them. We present an experiment that tested the effectiveness of providing aid reliability information to support participants' appropriate trust in and reliance on a CID aid. The results indicated that participants had difficulty in estimating the aid reliability. Participants who were not informed of the aid reliability trusted in and relied on the aid feedback less than those who were aware of the aid reliability. Providing the aid reliability information led to more appropriate reliance on the aid. This research has implications for the design of interfaces for individual CID systems and the training of infantry soldiers.