1. Human Supervisory Control Issues in Unmanned Vehicle Operations
Mary (Missy) Cummings
Humans and Automation Laboratory
Aeronautics & Astronautics
(617)

2. Humans & Automation Lab
Desert Hawk
Dragon eye for laptop

3. HAL Director Former U.S. Navy officer and pilot
Systems engineer with a cognitive focus
Research Interests: Human supervisory control, decision support design, human interaction with autonomous systems, design of experiments technology development, social impact of technology

4. Human Supervisory Control
Controls
Actuators
Computer
Task
Human Operator
(Supervisor)
Displays
Sensors
Humans on the loop vs. in the loop
Supporting knowledge-based versus skill-based tasks
Network-centric operations & cognitive saturation

6. Ten Areas of Concern Information overload Attention allocation
Appropriate levels of automation
Adaptive automation
Decision biases
Distributed decision-making through team coordination
Complexity
Supervisory monitoring of operators 
Trust and reliability
Accountability

7. Information Overload

8. Attention Allocation Multiple HSC tasks = Divided attention problem
Information uncertainties & time latencies
Preview times & stopping rules
Primary task disruption by secondary task
Chat

9. Automation Description
Appropriate Levels of Automation
Level
Automation Description 1
The computer offers no assistance: human must take all decision and actions. 2
The computer offers a complete set of decision/action alternatives, or 3
narrows the selection down to a few, or 4
suggests one alternative, and 5
executes that suggestion if the human approves, or 6
allows the human a restricted time to veto before automatic execution, or 7
executes automatically, then necessarily informs humans, and 8
informs the human only if asked, or 9
informs the human only if it, the computer, decides to. 10
The computer decides everything and acts autonomously, ignoring the human.

10. Adaptive Automation Dynamic role allocation A problem of intent
Mixed initiatives
A problem of intent
Cueing mechanisms
Psychophysiological
Decision theoretic
Performance-based

11. Decision Biases Naturalistic Decision Making Biases
Dynamic ill-structured problems with shifting goals (i.e., NCW)
Heuristics good & bad
Biases
Confirmation
Recency
Automation

12. Distributed Decision-making & Team Coordination
The move from hierarchical, centralized to decentralized control
Team mental models & shared situation awareness (SA)
Decision support
Automated agents as team members
Not just an issue for human teams
Swarming UAVs

13. Complexity
Traffic Management Advisor

14. Supervisory Monitoring
Nested supervisory control
Two basic issues: Recognizing & intervening
Interventions
Redistribute workload
Adding team members (both human & computer)
Modify mission objectives

15. Trust & Reliability

16. Accountability

17. The Future of UVs and NCO
We can’t do it without automation & intelligent autonomy
Bounded Collaboration
Human-centered design vs. mission-centered design
Unmanned systems do not really exist
The systems engineering process must consider humans early
Robust systems are needed for both human and automation brittleness considerations