Why Human-Autonomy Teaming?

Automation has entered nearly every aspect of our lives, but it often remains hard to understand. Why is this? Automation is often brittle, requiring constant human oversight to assure it operates as intended. This oversight has become harder as automation has become more complicated. To resolve this problem, Human-Autonomy Teaming (HAT) has been proposed. HAT is based on advances in providing automation transparency, a method for giving insight into the reasoning behind automated recommendations and actions, along with advances in human automation communications (e.g., voice). These, in turn, permit more trust in the automation when appropriate, and less when not, allowing a more targeted supervision of automated functions. This paper proposes a framework for HAT, incorporating three key tenets: transparency, bi-directional communication, and operator directed authority. These tenets, along with more capable automation, represent a shift in human-automation relations.