Teamwork-centered autonomy for extended human-agent interaction in space applications

Abstract

This paper summarizes our efforts to bring together and extend the best in current theory and technologies for teamwork-centered autonomy for space applications. Traditional planning technologies at the foundation of intelligent robotic systems typically take an autonomycentered approach, with representations, mechanisms, and algorithms that have been designed to ingest a set of goals and output a complete plan in the most efficient and sound fashion possible. A teamwork-centered autonomy approach, on the other hand, takes as a beginning premise that people are working in parallel alongside autonomous systems, and hence adopts the stance that the processes of understanding, problem solving, and task execution are necessarily incremental, subject to negotiation, and forever tentative. Thus, a successful approach to teamwork-centered autonomy will require that every element of the autonomous system be designed to facilitate the kind of give-and-take that quintessentially characterizes natural and effective teamwork among groups of people. We briefly describe the major components of this approach and current efforts to apply and evaluate its utility from both human-centered and cost-benefit perspectives.