Transparency for a Workload-Adaptive Cognitive Agent in a Manned–Unmanned Teaming Application

Abstract

This study focuses on the transparent design of a cognitive agent to enhance situation awareness in two aspects of a human-agent teaming application: assisted system management and mixed-initiative mission planning. Adaptive and complex agent behavior might result in the failure to comprehend resulting interventions, a decrease in trust, and a loss of overall situation awareness. This study describes and validates a concept for transparent agent design by adopting the transparency strategies proposed by the “situation awareness-based agent transparency model.” The overall objective was to improve the human operator's perception, comprehension, and projection of the agent's support. The concept was applied to the prototype of a workload-adaptive cognitive agent, which supports a helicopter crew during mission planning and execution in complex and dynamically changing multi-vehicle missions. A human-in-the-loop experiment revealed enhancements in situation awareness and performance. Subjective trust measures implied an increase in human-like characteristics of the cognitive agent. The results and the potential for further research are discussed.