"Tasking" Interfaces for Flexible Interaction with Automa- tion: Keeping the Operator in Control

The ongoing debate in the HCI community between direct manipulation and intelligent, automated agents poin ts to a fundamental problem in complex systems. Humans want to remain in charge even if they don’t want to (or can ’t) make every action and decision themselves. We have been exploring a middle road through the development of “t asking interfaces”—interfaces which share a task model wit h a projective planning system to enable human operator s to flexibly “call plays” (that is, stipulate plans) at various levels of abstraction, leaving the remainder of the pl an to be fleshed out by the planning system. The result is akin to ‘tasking’ a knowledgeable subordinate to whom one can give more or less detailed instructions. We descri be a prototype tasking interface for developing mission pla ns for Uninhabited Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs).

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