Five Requisites for Human-Agent Decision Sharing in Military Environments

Working with industry, universities and other government agencies, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory has been engaged in multi-year programs to understand the role of humans working with autonomous and robotic systems. The purpose of the paper is to present an overview of the research themes in order to abstract five research requirements for effective human-agent decision-making. Supporting research for each of the five requirements is discussed to elucidate the issues involved and to make recommendations for future research. The requirements include: (a) direct link between the operator and a supervisory agent, (b) interface transparency, (c) appropriate trust, (d) cognitive architectures to infer intent, and e) common language between humans and agents.