Coactive Design Why Interdependence Must Shape Autonomy

1. Coactive DesignWhy Interdependence Must Shape Autonomy • Matthew Johnson • mjohnson@ihmc.us • Florida Institute for • Human and Machine Cognition • Pensacola, FL • TU Delft • December 15, 2010

2. Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition

4. Motivation

5. Problem Statement When designing sophisticated human-agent systems, what is the critical design feature of an agent or robot?

6. Problem Statement When designing sophisticated human-agent systems, what is the critical design feature of an agent or robot? Autonomy

7. What is Autonomy? • Autonomy has two basic senses: • self-sufficiency, the capability of an entity to take care of itself. • self-directedness, or freedom from outside control.

8. Current Approaches Self Sufficiency • Function Allocation (Fitts) • characterize the general strengths and weaknesses of humans and machines • Supervisory Control (Sheridan) • a human oversees one or more autonomous systems, statically allocating tasks to them. • Adjustable Autonomy (Dorais) • the ability of autonomous systems to operate with dynamically varying levels of independence • Sliding Autonomy (Dias) • Same as adjustable autonomy • Adaptive Automation (Sheridan) • the system must decide at runtime which functions to automate and to what extent • Flexible autonomy (Technology horizons) • the degree of autonomous control that the system is allowed to take on, and in which this degree of autonomy can be varied from essentially none to near or complete autonomy • Mixed-initiative interaction (Allen) • a flexible interaction strategy, where each agent can contribute to the task what it does best • Collaborative Control (Fong) • allows robots to benefit from human assistance during perception and cognition, and not just planning and command generation Self Directedness

9. However… • Automated assistance of whatever kind does not simply enhance our ability to perform the task: it changes the nature of the task itself1. • Many functions in complex systems are interdependent 1. D. A. Norman, "How might people interact with agents?," in Software Agents, J. M. Bradshaw, Ed. Cambridge, MA: The AAAI Press/The MIT Press, 1997, pp. 49-55 (see also How might people interact with robots? http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/how_might_humans_int.html).

10. Problem Statement When designing sophisticated human-agent systems, what is the critical design feature of an agent or robot? Autonomy Autonomy Interdependence

11. Coactive Design In sophisticated human-agent systems, the underlying interdependence of joint activity is the critical design feature.

12. Disclaimer: The authors of this work are in no way suggesting autonomy is unimportant or not of value. If you work in the area of autonomy you should in no way feel threatened or troubled by the following discussion. If at any time you feel uncomfortable, please inform the speaker and he will pause and reassure you that autonomy is important and a foundational component to all robotic systems.

13. Coactive Design In sophisticated human-agent systems, the underlying interdependence of joint activity is the critical design feature.

14. Dependence vs. Interdependence

15. 2002 2008 Coactive Design In sophisticated human-agent systems, the underlying interdependence of joint activity is the critical design feature. Dependent Independent Interdependent ? 1997

16. 1995 Coactive Design In sophisticated human-agent systems, the underlying interdependence of joint activity is the critical design feature. Dependent Independent Interdependent

17. What does coactive mean? • Awareness of • Consideration for • Capability to support

18. What does coactive mean? • Awareness of • Consideration for • Capability to support …Joint Activity

19. What does coactive mean? • Awareness of • Consideration for • Capability to support …Joint Activity

20. What does coactive mean? • Awareness of • Consideration for • Capability to support …Joint Activity

21. Autonomy Perspective Self-directedness Self-sufficiency

22. Coactive Perspective Self-directedness Self-sufficiency Capability to support Interdependence

23. Current Challenges Self-directedness Burden Self-sufficiency

24. Current Challenges Over-Trusted Self-directedness Burden Self-sufficiency

25. Current Challenges Over-Trusted Self-directedness Burden Under-Utilized Self-sufficiency

26. Current Challenges Opaque Over-Trusted Self-directedness Burden Under-Utilized Self-sufficiency

27. Coactive Perspective Opaque Opaque Self-directedness Burden Self-sufficiency Transparency Feedback Capability to support Interdependence Low to Moderate autonomy – situation awareness Moderate to High autonomy - understanding decisions

28. Hypothesis • In human-agent systems engaged in joint activity, the benefits of higher levels of autonomy cannot be realized without addressing interdependence through coordination. Over Trusted Opaque Self-directedness Burden Under Utilized Self-sufficiency

29. Block World for Teams (BW4T)

30. Defining “Higher Levels” of Autonomy Over Trusted Opaque Self-directedness Burden Under Utilized Self-sufficiency

31. Results Prediction • Did burden decrease? • Did opacity increase? • Was there an inflection point? • Did performance decrease with increasing autonomy? • What does this mean?

32. Block World for Teams (BW4T)

33. Future Directions • Does addressing interdependence improve performance? • How does interdependence effect the results? • How do different ways to address interdependence effect performance? • How does team size effect the result? • Does this apply to other domains? • How to we measure to costs and benefits?

34. Coactive Design • We no longer look at the problem as simply trying to make agents more autonomous, but, in addition, we strive to make them more capable of being interdependent. Thank You! … Questions?

35. Common Issues