Connecting and Leveraging Digital and Physical Dimensions to Advance Human-AutonomyTeaming
Abstract
Project Summary/Abstract (Program Manager Marc Steinberg, 351)As the field of artificial intelligence (AI) continues to rapidly deve,lop, the potential for AI to function in a collaborative role alongside humans has never been higher. This potential has led to a su,rge of research in the area known as human-autonomy teaming. Traditionally, human-autonomy teaming research has occurred within two,perspectives and environments: (1) digital, and (2) physical. While these two perspectives have created a large body of literature,,they are often disconnected and fail to build off of one another. The digital perspective often utilizes perspectives of psychology,and human factors engineering in digitally simulated environments with agents to better understand how humans and autonomy can socia,lly work together for a shared goal. In contrast, the physical perspective often focuses on engineering and computational challenges, in coordinating and integrating physical systems where humans and robots typically interact for the purposes of a shared goal. This, proposal aims to provide new capabilities to the TRACE research group that will allow for empirical research that connects and leve,rages (1) physical implementations of human-autonomy teams with (2) digitally implemented human-autonomy teams in a variety of diffe,rent, Navy relevant environments. For (1), we propose the utilization of three different physical drone platforms, each with the cap,ability of being controlled by humans or autonomy, which TRACE-RG will use to implement human-autonomous drone teams. For (2), we pr,opose the utilization of common digital environments to study human-autonomy teams that conduct teaming processes digitally. The uti,lization of both digital and physical environments will allow TRACE to empirically quantify the translation and integration of popul,ar digital based research to real-world human-autonomy teams, thus providing a greater understanding of the capabilities of human-au,tonomy teamings future implementations. Furthermore, the hardware specified has been selectively chosen to ensure that this transla,tion between digital to physical environments can maintain Naval relevance by utilizing context specific drones and environments for, water, air, and ground based experiments. The TRACE res,, including: (1) investigating the relationship of human autonomy teaming in both digital environments and physical environments, (2,) understanding interactions between team members that have different levels of experience with digital or physical training environ,search gathered in digital environments to directly benefit physical environments, and vise versa; thus rapidly increasing the rate,of improvement for human-autonomy teaming.Addressing these gaps will be vital to the future of human-autonomy teaming, both for the,research community, as well as the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Navy, for several reasons: (1) the DoD and Navy will utilize,human-autonomy teams that interact both digitally and physically in their respective environments, (2) joint operations will require, the simultaneous use of groups that interface both digitally and physically, and (3) the likelihood of human-only, human-autonomy,,and multi-autonomy teams working in multiple different environmental contexts is especially high in DoD and Navy contexts. This equi,pment grant will allow TRACE research group to utilize the current state of the art in AI, drone, and digital technology to empirica,lly and consistently outline the inevitable transition from digitally conducted experiments to real-world human-autonomy teaming.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Mar 05, 2022
- Source ID
- N000142212250
Entities
People
- Nathaniel Mcneese
Organizations
- Clemson University
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy