Team Of Heterogeneous Unmanned Vehicles Research Articles

The IMPACT of Agent Transparency on Human Performance

The primary purpose of this article is to determine the impact of a simulated agent's transparency on human performance and related variables, such as response time, workload, and trust calibration. The agent supports participants as they complete a base defense task by managing a team of heterogeneous unmanned vehicles and serves as a decision aid to the human. Three conditions of transparency are explored. In condition 1, the agent displays only the basic information (map of vehicle location and proposed routes). In condition 2, the agent displays the basic information and an explanation of its reasoning. In condition 3, the agent displays the basic information, reasoning, and uncertainties involved in the plans. Results show that participants exhibit better performance and trust calibration in the high-transparency conditions without perceiving a significant increase in workload. However, response time also increased, likely due to the additional processing time needed for conditions with more information. Overall, our findings indicate that the increased agent transparency can improve human-agent decision making and performance, but with a small cost of the efficiency (timeliness) of task completion.

Human-autonomy teaming in military settings

ABSTRACTIn this Thematic Issue ‘Human-Autonomy Teaming’ of Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, five U.S. military-funded research efforts are presented to discuss human factors issues in a variety of military human-autonomy teaming mission environments: dismounted infantry working with a small ground robot; intelligence analysis; human working with an intelligent agent to manage a team of heterogeneous unmanned vehicles; vehicle-mounted ground penetrating radar. The research issues addressed in this Issue are diverse – from display designs to operator performance and trust in the systems. The results and insights documented in these five articles should provide useful resources to researchers and practitioners working on intelligent and autonomous systems.

The European R&D-Project GREX: Coordination and control of cooperating heterogeneous unmanned systems in uncertain environments

The GREX Project – one of the few collaborating R&D initiatives, centered around Autonomous Marine Vehicles, and which are co-funded by the European Union within the 6th framework, is about to end. It started in June 2006 and faces its final evaluation in October 2009. “Grex” is the Latin word for a group or flock and for the first time ever a team of heterogeneous unmanned vehicles perform a coordinated, cooperative mission whereby each vehicle plays the role of a sophisticated node in a network. This presentation will give an overview about the solutions to the challenging and ambitious goals of the project which sets a true milestone in AUV capabilities.