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ObjectiveThis study examines low-, medium-, and high-performing Human-Autonomy Teams’ (HATs’) communication strategies during various technological failures that impact routine communication strategies to adapt to the task environment. BackgroundTeams must adapt their communication strategies during dynamic tasks, where more successful teams make more substantial adaptations. Adaptations in communication strategies may explain how successful HATs overcome technological failures. Further, technological failures of variable severity may alter communication strategies of HATs at different performance levels in their attempts to overcome each failure. MethodHATs in a Remotely Piloted Aircraft System-Synthetic Task Environment (RPAS-STE), involving three team members, were tasked with photographing targets. Each triad had two randomly assigned participants in navigator and photographer roles, teaming with an experimenter who simulated an AI pilot in a Wizard of Oz paradigm. Teams encountered two different technological failures, automation and autonomy, where autonomy failures were more challenging to overcome. ResultsHigh-performing HATs calibrated their communication strategy to the complexity of the different failures better than medium- and low-performing teams. Further, HATs adjusted their communication strategies over time. Finally, only the most severe failures required teams to increase the efficiency of their communication. ConclusionHAT effectiveness under degraded conditions depends on the type of communication strategies enacted by the team. Previous findings from studies of all-human teams apply here; however, novel results suggest information requests are particularly important to HAT success during failures. ApplicationUnderstanding the communication strategies of HATs under degraded conditions can inform training protocols to help HATs overcome failures. 

While there is increased interest in how trust spreads in Human Autonomy Teams (HATs), most trust measurements are subjective and do not examine real-time changes in trust. To develop a trust metric that consists of objective variables influenced by trust/distrust manipulations, we conducted an Interactive hybrid Cognitive Task Analysis (IhCTA) for a Remotely Piloted Aerial System (RPAS) HAT. The IhCTA adapted parts of the hybrid Cognitive Task Analysis (hCTA) framework. In this paper, we present the four steps of the IhCTA approach, including 1) generating a scenario task overview, 2) generating teammate-specific event flow diagrams, 3) identifying interactions and interdependencies impacted by trust/distrust manipulations, and 4) processing RPAS variables based on the IhCTA to create a metric. We demonstrate the application of the metric through a case study that examines how the influence of specific interactions on team state changes before and after the spread of distrust. 

The goal of the Space Challenge project is to identify the challenges faced by teams in space operations and then represent those challenges in a distributed human-machine teaming scenario that resembles typical space operations and to measure the coordination dynamics across the entire system. Currently, several challenges have been identified through semi-structured interviews with nine subject matter experts (SMEs) who were astronauts or those who have experienced or have been involved with interplanetary space exploration. We conducted a thematic analysis on the interviews through an iterative process. Challenges were categorized into four categories, including, communication, training, distributed teaming, and complexity. Based on the findings, challenges and key teamwork characteristics of space operations were integrated into the initial scenario development. In addition to the scenario, we plan to use dynamical system methods to analyze team activity in real time.