Specifying Organizational Policies and Individual Preferences for Human-Software Interaction

Current manned space operations employ policies and protocols to specify an etiquette for human-human interaction. This space operations etiquette presumes that operations are conducted synchronously from a few centralized locations - a control center or space vehicle. The availability of automated control software, portable computing platforms, and wireless communication makes it possible for distributed groups of humans and software agents to conduct some space operations remotely and asynchronously. The space operations etiquette must be adapted to address the challenges that arise when changing to teams of distributed agents. We are investigating intelligent support agents for crew and ground personnel that implement an etiquette for notification and alerting, which is an essential part of the space operations etiquette. Our approach differs from previous work on notification and alerting because it focuses on meeting the needs of an organization rather than the needs of an individual. In this paper we describe our etiquette for remote space operations and our approach for implementing context sensitive notification.