Identifying factors that underpin human-machine teamwork for joint crewed-uncrewed aerial vehicle operations: application of the grounded theory approach

Abstract

Crewed-uncrewed aerial vehicle operations are being viewed as a novel concept of operations that could respond to increasing adversarial threats. Its realisation vastly depends on the partnership between human operators and advanced machine agents. This implicates the criticality of human-machine teamwork. Whilst factors required for effective teamwork exist, their development is grounded in literature focusing on human-human partnerships. A systematic literature review was conducted focusing on the factors that underpin human-machine teamwork. Eight themes were identified: Distributed Situation Awareness, bi-directional communication, agent coordination, augmented decision-making, trust management, mutual performance monitoring, compen­satory strategies and behavioural adaptation. The insights developed from these factors identified system and design recommendations for future crewed-uncrewed aerial vehicle operations. A network model was developed which identifies the interconnections between each theme and proposes formalised propositions to describe these relation­ships for human-machine teams.