Effects of probing behaviors to adapt machine autonomy in shared control systems

This paper addresses the adaptability in the human-machine collaboration as a necessary element for the adequate coordination between human and mechanized control. Currently, all efforts to resolve any mismatch between humans and machines are charged only to the human operators as machines have no ability to deal with and adapt to variable behaviors of their human partners. Concerning this issue, inspired by our human proactive actions to the external world, the authors advocate introducing proactive agency into machine autonomies so that they can probe or sound out the partner's covert judgments for their adaptation. This behavioral model is implemented into a simulated shared control environment, in which both a human operator and a machine autonomy can control the behavior of a mobile robot. This testbed environment is utilized to investigate their joint activity and then discuss feasibility of the co-adaptive approach towards the well-coordinated collaboration by the human operator and the machine autonomy.