Mutual Understanding in Human-Machine Teaming

Abstract Collaborative robots (i.e., "cobots") and machine learning-based virtual agents are increasingly entering the human workspace with the aim of increasing productivity, enhancing safety, and improving the quality of our lives. These agents will dynamically interact with a wide variety of people in dynamic and novel contexts, increasing the prevalence of human-machine teams in healthcare, manufacturing, and search-and-rescue. In this research, we enhance the mutual understanding within a human-machine team by enabling cobots to understand heterogeneous teammates via person-specific embeddings, identifying contexts in which xAI methods can help improve team mental model alignment, and enabling cobots to effectively communicate information that supports high-performance human-machine teaming.