Collaboration interface supporting human-autonomy teaming for unmanned vehicle management

Advances in technology are leading to envisioned operational concepts that team a single operator with autonomy to manage multiple heterogeneous unmanned vehicles (UxVs). Several autonomy decision aids have been integrated into a prototype control station with innovative human-autonomy interfaces that allow multiple UxV management via high-level commands called “plays”. Each play defines the actions of one or more UxVs, often in response to a mission event or task. This paper describes recent enhancements made to a Task Manager tool to better support operator-autonomy collaboration. After mission events are signaled in chat, corresponding tasks are communicated by an intelligent agent via pictorial icons designed to facilitate rapid retrieval of necessary actions. These icons also enable direct manipulation control functionality. The Task Manager supports shared awareness across human and agent team members by summarizing the relative priority, recency, and completion status of mission tasks