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  Human Supervisory Control Issues in Unmanned
Vehicle Operations Mary (Missy) Cummings Humans
and Automation Laboratory http//halab.mit.edu Aer
onautics Astronautics [phone] MissyC_at_mit.
edu
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Humans Automation Lab
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HAL Director

• Former U.S. Navy officer and pilot
• Systems engineer with a cognitive focus
• Research Interests Human supervisory control,
  decision support design, human interaction with
  autonomous systems, design of experiments
  technology development, social impact of
  technology

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Human Supervisory Control
Actuators
Controls
Human Operator (Supervisor)
Displays
Sensors

• Humans on the loop vs. in the loop
• Supporting knowledge-based versus skill-based
  tasks
• Network-centric operations cognitive
  saturation

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Ten Areas of Concern

• Information overload
• Attention allocation
• Appropriate levels of automation
• Adaptive automation
• Decision biases
• Distributed decision-making through team
  coordination
• Complexity
• Supervisory monitoring of operators 
• Trust and reliability
• Accountability

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Information Overload
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Attention Allocation

• Multiple HSC tasks Divided attention problem
• Information uncertainties time latencies
• Preview times stopping rules
• Primary task disruption by secondary task
• Chat

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Appropriate Levels of Automation
Level Automation Description
1 The computer offers no assistance human must take all decision and actions.
2 The computer offers a complete set of decision/action alternatives, or
3 narrows the selection down to a few, or
4 suggests one alternative, and
5 executes that suggestion if the human approves, or
6 allows the human a restricted time to veto before automatic execution, or
7 executes automatically, then necessarily informs humans, and
8 informs the human only if asked, or
9 informs the human only if it, the computer, decides to.
10 The computer decides everything and acts autonomously, ignoring the human.
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Adaptive Automation

• Dynamic role allocation
• Mixed initiatives
• A problem of intent
• Cueing mechanisms
• Psychophysiological
• Decision theoretic
• Performance-based

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Decision Biases

• Naturalistic Decision Making
• Dynamic ill-structured problems with shifting
  goals (i.e., NCW)
• Heuristics good bad
• Biases
• Confirmation
• Recency
• Automation

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Distributed Decision-making Team Coordination

• The move from hierarchical, centralized to
  decentralized control
• Team mental models shared situation awareness
  (SA)
• Decision support
• Automated agents as team members
• Not just an issue for human teams
• Swarming UAVs

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Complexity
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Supervisory Monitoring

• Nested supervisory control
• Two basic issues Recognizing intervening
• Interventions
• Redistribute workload
• Adding team members (both human computer)
• Modify mission objectives

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Trust Reliability
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Accountability
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The Future of UVs and NCO

• We cant do it without automation intelligent
  autonomy
• Bounded Collaboration
• Human-centered design vs. mission-centered design
• Unmanned systems do not really exist
• The systems engineering process must consider
  humans early
• Robust systems are needed for both human and
  automation brittleness considerations