TY - JOUR
T1 - Team coordination and effectiveness in human-autonomy teaming
AU - Demir, Mustafa
AU - Likens, Aaron D.
AU - Cooke, Nancy
AU - Amazeen, Polemnia
AU - McNeese, Nathan J.
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received December 14, 2017; revised May 30, 2018; accepted September 18, 2018. Date of publication November 7, 2018; date of current version March 13, 2019. This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research under Award N000141110844 (Program Managers: M. Steinberg, P. Bello) and Award N000141712382 (Program Managers: M. Steinberg, M. Clark). The work of P. G. Amazeen was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant BCS 1255922. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. This paper was recommended by Associate Editor C. Burns. (Corresponding author: Mustafa Demir.) M. Demir and N. J. Cooke are with the Human Systems Engineering, Arizona State University, Mesa, AZ 85212 USA (e-mail:, mdemir@asu.edu; ncooke@asu.edu).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 IEEE.
PY - 2019/4
Y1 - 2019/4
N2 - In the past, team coordination dynamics have been explored using nonlinear dynamical systems (NDS) methods, but the relationship between team coordination dynamics and team performance for all-human teams was assumed to be linear. The current study examines team coordination dynamics with an extended version of the NDS methods and assumes that its relationship with team performance for human-autonomy teams (HAT) is nonlinear. In this study, three team conditions are compared with the goals of better understanding how team coordination dynamics differ between all-human teams and HAT and how these dynamics relate to team performance and team situation awareness. Each condition was determined based on manipulation of the pilot role: In the first condition (synthetic) the pilot role was played by a synthetic agent, in the second condition (control) it was a randomly assigned participant, and in the third condition (experimenter) it was an expert who used a role specific coordination script. NDS indices revealed that synthetic teams were rigid, followed by experimenter teams, who were metastable, and control teams, who were unstable. Experimenter teams demonstrated better team effectiveness (i.e., better team performance and team situation awareness) than control and synthetic teams. Team coordination stability is related to team performance and team situation awareness in a nonlinear manner with optimal performance and situation awareness associated with metastability coupled with flexibility. This result means that future development of synthetic teams should address these coordination dynamics, specifically, rigidity in coordination.
AB - In the past, team coordination dynamics have been explored using nonlinear dynamical systems (NDS) methods, but the relationship between team coordination dynamics and team performance for all-human teams was assumed to be linear. The current study examines team coordination dynamics with an extended version of the NDS methods and assumes that its relationship with team performance for human-autonomy teams (HAT) is nonlinear. In this study, three team conditions are compared with the goals of better understanding how team coordination dynamics differ between all-human teams and HAT and how these dynamics relate to team performance and team situation awareness. Each condition was determined based on manipulation of the pilot role: In the first condition (synthetic) the pilot role was played by a synthetic agent, in the second condition (control) it was a randomly assigned participant, and in the third condition (experimenter) it was an expert who used a role specific coordination script. NDS indices revealed that synthetic teams were rigid, followed by experimenter teams, who were metastable, and control teams, who were unstable. Experimenter teams demonstrated better team effectiveness (i.e., better team performance and team situation awareness) than control and synthetic teams. Team coordination stability is related to team performance and team situation awareness in a nonlinear manner with optimal performance and situation awareness associated with metastability coupled with flexibility. This result means that future development of synthetic teams should address these coordination dynamics, specifically, rigidity in coordination.
KW - Human-autonomy teaming
KW - nonlinear dynamical systems
KW - synthetic agent
KW - team coordination
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U2 - 10.1109/THMS.2018.2877482
DO - 10.1109/THMS.2018.2877482
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85051543411
VL - 49
SP - 150
EP - 159
JO - IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems
JF - IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems
SN - 2168-2291
IS - 2
M1 - 8526337
ER -