Influencing Trust for Human-Automation Collaborative Scheduling of Multiple Unmanned Vehicles

Interactive effects of users' openness and robot reliability on trust: evidence from psychological intentions, task performance, visual behaviours, and cerebral activations

Although trust plays a vital role in human-robot interaction, there is currently a dearth of literature examining the effect of users' openness personality on trust in actual interaction. This study aims to investigate the interaction effects of users' openness and robot reliability on trust. We designed a voice-based walking task and collected subjective trust ratings, task metrics, eye-tracking data, and fNIRS signals from users with different openness to unravel the psychological intentions, task performance, visual behaviours, and cerebral activations underlying trust. The results showed significant interaction effects. Users with low openness exhibited lower subjective trust, more fixations, and higher activation of rTPJ in the highly reliable condition than those with high openness. The results suggested that users with low openness might be more cautious and suspicious about the highly reliable robot and allocate more visual attention and neural processing to monitor and infer robot status than users with high openness.

From 'automation' to 'autonomy': the importance of trust repair in human-machine interaction

Modern interactions with technology are increasingly moving away from simple human use of computers as tools to the establishment of human relationships with autonomous entities that carry out actions on our behalf. In a recent commentary, Peter Hancock issued a stark warning to the field of human factors that attention must be focused on the appropriate design of a new class of technology: highly autonomous systems. In this article, we heed the warning and propose a human-centred approach directly aimed at ensuring that future human-autonomy interactions remain focused on the user's needs and preferences. By adapting literature from industrial psychology, we propose a framework to infuse a unique human-like ability, building and actively repairing trust, into autonomous systems. We conclude by proposing a model to guide the design of future autonomy and a research agenda to explore current challenges in repairing trust between humans and autonomous systems. Practitioner Summary: This paper is a call to practitioners to re-cast our connection to technology as akin to a relationship between two humans rather than between a human and their tools. To that end, designing autonomy with trust repair abilities will ensure future technology maintains and repairs relationships with their human partners.

Supervising and Controlling Unmanned Systems: A Multi-Phase Study with Subject Matter Experts

Proliferation in the use of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) in civil and military operations has presented a multitude of human factors challenges; from how to bridge the gap between demand and availability of trained operators, to how to organize and present data in meaningful ways. Utilizing the Design Research Methodology (DRM), a series of closely related studies with subject matter experts (SMEs) demonstrate how the focus of research gradually shifted from “how many systems can a single operator control” to “how to distribute missions among operators and systems in an efficient way”. The first set of studies aimed to explore the modal number, i.e., how many systems can a single operator supervise and control. It was found that an experienced operator can supervise up to 15 UASs efficiently using moderate levels of automation, and control (mission and payload management) up to three systems. Once this limit was reached, a single operator's performance was compared to a team controlling the same number of systems. In general, teams led to better performances. Hence, shifting design efforts toward developing tools that support teamwork environments of multiple operators with multiple UASs (MOMU). In MOMU settings, when the tasks are similar or when areas of interest overlap, one operator seems to have an advantage over a team who needs to collaborate and coordinate. However, in all other cases, a team was advantageous over a single operator. Other findings and implications, as well as future directions for research are discussed.