Cognition and game theory in the design of a collaboration manager for shared control of multiple UV assets

Concurrent requests for assets such as unmanned vehicles (UV) by distributed semi-autonomous teams pose a difficult challenge to coordination and resource optimization. A collaboration management interface system was designed on the basis of a requirements analysis of the UV domain, research findings on group cognition, and concepts from game theory. The system analyzes the joint utility space for concurrent plans, matches them to appropriate game structures, selects an appropriate tactic (centered on information, problem solving, or negotiation), and implements the collaboration scheme in an interface protocol. The methods have considerable promise for coordination of distributed teams in a variety of contexts and for reducing cognitive biases associated with collaboration.