IBM ITA: Human-Agent Teamwork Models

The focus of this project is to develop models of human-agent teamwork for implementation in software agent systems. Both human collaboration and software agent collaboration have been thoroughly studied, but there is relatively little prior work on hybrid human-agent teamwork. Some research has identified the roles that agents could play in hybrid teams (e.g. supporting individual team members, being a teammate, or supporting the team as a whole). Some other work has investigated trust concepts as the fundamental building block for effective human-agent teamwork, or posited the types of shared knowledge that promote mutual understanding between cooperating humans and agents. However many of the facets of human agent teamwork models, such as communication protocols for forming mutual intelligibility, performing team monitoring to assess progress, forming joint goals, addressing task interdependencies in hybrid teamwork, are still unexplored. This project is part of IBM’s International Technology Alliance in Network and Information Sciences (ITA), a consortium of leading academic and industry partners performing research in network-centric systems.