Experimental Validation of Pilot Situation Awareness Enhancement Through Transparency Design of a Scalable Mixed-Initiative Mission Planner

Abstract

This study focuses on the increase of situation awareness (SA) in human-agent mixed-initiative mission planning. Complex agent behavior and the failure to comprehend the agent’s proposed actions might result in a loss of SA and a decrease in trust. This study adopted the transparency strategies proposed by the SA-based Agent Transparency (SAT) model to improve the human operator’s perception, comprehension, and projection of the agent’s interventions. The concept was applied to prototype of a planning associate for multi-vehicle mission planning. A human-in-the-loop experiment revealed a higher SA and performance. Subjective trust measures could not verify a change in operator’s trust in the agent. The results and the potential for further research are discussed.