Who Makes Johnny 5 Come Alive? Using Diverse Perspectives to Drive Requirements for Human-Robot Teams
Abstract
The proposed research objective is to identify whether diversity will create better requirements, which will lead to better systems using perspectives from law, philosophical, psychological, theatre, and engineering disciplines. Who decides the requirements for autonomous systems? Further, how do we know that they considered all of the possibilities in the design space to create the best set of requirements? These questions are particularly salient for autonomous systems (AS) because AS likely represent a revolution in military affairs. A revolution in military affairs often describes how technology can impact the doctrine and organization of forces in warfare. Because AS have the opportunity to “change everything,” we should encourage broad thinking and creativity in designing the AS to maximize capability in an uncertain battlespace. Prior research has shown that diverse teams perform better than homogenous teams in a myriad of different tasks. Diversity, in this research, has often focused on ethnicity, race, and gender. However, we do not know the impact of diverse teams on requirements generation. Additionally, in creating autonomous systems for the military, we should also consider branch of service, rating or military occupational specialty, and time in service when considering how we might be diverse. The proposed research examines whether diverse perspectives during the formation of requirements for AS lead to overall better systems. Through scenario-based experimentation and questionnaire deployment, this work will gather data on requirement formation with the input from diverse perspectives such as law, philosophy, psychology, arts, and engineering to inform AS. The data will be analyzed using qualitative content analysis and quantitative inferential statistics to identify AS requirements formed from different perspectives. Together, these efforts will allow various military stakeholders to approach requirements definition for autonomous systems with an appropriate perspective. While not assured, we believe that better requirements will create a better AS to support the warfighter. Upon successful completion of the research, actionable information for systems engineers in the requirements and architecture design phases of the systems engineering process will be delivered in the form of a technical report. Systems engineers will be able to use this information to better inform and manage the system architecture concerning the diversity of stakeholder during requirements formation for AS. This will benefit the public in a number of possible ways, including through improved system performance and reduced system costs.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Oct 10, 2022
- Source ID
- N002442220003
Entities
People
- Kristine Weger
Organizations
- United States Navy
- University of Alabama in Huntsville