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Anticipating the Unanticipated: Exploring Explainability in Mixed-Initiative Human-Autonomy Cooperation through Anticipatory Information Pushing

Autonomous robots have proven to be useful for search and rescue (SAR) by being deployed in emergency situations and removing the need for direct human presence. However, there remains a need for effective communication between the robot and human operator to cooperate as a team. This thesis investigates the question of when to explain an autonomous agent’s behaviour in the setting of human-robot teaming. A game environment is developed to conduct a virtual SAR experiment to test the effect of explanation timings between two conditions: (1) always explaining - the robot provides explanations whenever possible, and (2) anticipatory explaining - the robot determines when to explain based on the context. When to explain is determined through the construction of argumentation frameworks modelling the context. The effect of anticipatory information pushing is tested on two metrics: team performance and explanation experience. Results indicate anticipatory explaining does not have a significant effect on team performance and participants’ explanation satisfaction. Additionally, participant feedback shows they prefer to be in control instead of cooperating as a team. These findings underline the importance of studying explanation presentation in high-demanding environments and indicate a need for interdisciplinary discussion on the design of human-robot teaming.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-227406
Date January 2024
CreatorsVossers, Joost
PublisherUmeå universitet, Institutionen för datavetenskap
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
RelationUMNAD ; 1501

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