Human Autonomy Teaming (HAT)
Enabling humans and autonomy to work together as reconfigurable ground vehicle crews that can fight and adapt in complex environments
The HAT ERP was developed to enable flexible, reconfigurable human-machine teaming for the U.S. Army’s Modernization Priority Next Generation Combat Vehicle. Future combat vehicles will be expected to execute extremely complex multi-domain operations, with reduced Soldier-System ratios relative to legacy platforms. This dramatic increase in battlefield complexity, and reduction in crew size, will require effective teaming with emerging technologies, such as AI, autonomy, and robotics, in order to succeed.
Proper methods for effectively employing and teaming with these technologies are ongoing areas of research in multiple scientific communities of practice. We believe that the solution lies in flexible, reconfigurable teaming – fungible, software-based crew station designs could potentially allow humans and AI-enabled systems to share the burden of the mission.
Accomplishing this task requires research in four key areas: human-autonomy team resource allocation, human-guided machine learning, human-autonomy team assessment, and human-autonomy team evolution over longer time scales (i.e., mission to mission). HAT will enable Soldiers and autonomy for mobility, fire control, and aided target recognition to operate ground vehicles in order to fight, adapt, and make better decisions as reconfigurable Next Generation Combat Vehicle platoons.
Objectives
- Future military systems will contain more numerous and complex capabilities. How can the team distribute cognitive and computational resources to employ these capabilities effectively?
- Soldier-autonomy teams must adapt in response to evolving mission demands, commander’s intent, and adversarial dynamics. How can we enable Soldiers to retrain autonomy at the edge?
- Current methods struggle to assess autonomy; methods to assess Soldiers are costly and scripted. How can we improve data collection & analysis to assess Soldier-autonomy teams?
- Soldier-autonomy teams will generate more data than ever before. How can we use this data to generate actionable information, that we can then use to plan the next mission?
Impact
Provide Human-Agent teams that perform as well as Soldier teams, but with additional capabilities including:
- Greater team resilience with robust, adaptive performance
- Fast, dynamic team reconfiguration to match capabilities
- Faster, more informed decision making
- Reduced risk to Soldiers
Contact
Brandon Perelman
Program Manager
brandon.s.perelman.civ@army.mil