Issues Relevant for Synthetic Teammate – Human Teammate Interactions in Operations of a Synthetic Unmanned Aerial System

Two experiments are reported that set the stage for a project in which an ACT-R based Air Vehicle Operator will interact with two human teammates in an Unmanned Aerial System synthetic environment. Of interest are the ways in which the synthetic teammate fails to coordinate in an effective manner with humans. In Experiment 1, the new communication mode of text chat is compared to voice communications used previously in this task environment with all human participants. Issues of team performance and coordination were examined and differences noted particularly due to lag in the asynchronous chat mode. In Experiment 2 a condition in which two team members were told that the third was remotely located was compared to a condition in which two team members were told that the third human team member was a synthetic agent. Preliminary observations indicate that the “synthetic agent” is ignored and experiences terse communication compared to the remote teammate