EAGER/Collaborative Research:Bumpless Re-Engagement in Shared Control

Ohio State University, The, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

This EArly-Concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) award is an interdisciplinary project that brings together an expert in adaptive control with an expert in the cognitive basis of anomaly response. The focus is on providers of highly automated, business critical, smart digital services in which human supervisors normally monitor automatic controllers, but must take over control if anomalous events occur that the automation is not designed to handle. The objective is to ensure that such transitions occur safely, smoothly, and reliably. An industrial research partner will provide a set of cases of anomaly response from actual business critical software services. Smart services increasingly rely on autonomous computational mechanisms to quickly handle extremely large numbers of transactions extremely. Given the scale and dependence on automation, even small disrupting events can cascade quickly, and human supervision may lead to late and erroneous responses when anomalies occur that challenge automated capabilities. This project promises to re-engage human supervisors in the developing anomaly (a) smoothly, by providing anomaly visualizations that anticipate when the automated activity is at risk of saturating control, and (b) quickly, so that supervisors can intervene to block cascading problems. Performance testing will be based on actual cases of anomaly response and will estimate how re-engagement following anomalies is smooth or bumpy, the increase in responsiveness to anomalies, and the range of autonomous activities that can be supervised effectively with the new form of shared control.