Tools for enabling teaming during mission planning and rehearsal (Conference Presentation)

The Army anticipates that future battles will be in more complex and dynamic environments, requiring the Army to push modernization priorities. In order for Soldiers to thrive within these challenging operational contexts, they must rapidly adapt to leverage and integrate technology in order to gain and maintain overmatch over near peer adversaries. Teaming will be especially critical for mission success. Soldier teams will need to be adaptive and fluid in their roles to respond to dynamic mission demands. Technology can be leveraged to enable and enhance teaming between human and humanagent teams. Augmented reality (AR) technology may provide an adaptive solution for information sharing across individuals and teams to promote a common operational picture within future operational environments. Here, we present a small teams study where dyads leveraged technological tools that helped facilitate teaming during a simulated mission planning and rehearsal scenario. Partners worked together to plan a path to extract a high value target while avoiding obstacles and hostile forces. Dyads completed missions using two technologies counterbalanced across the study. The first condition was reflective of current methods for mission planning in the Army; dyads used a Table Top to plan, rehearse, and execute the simulated mission. In the second condition, dyads used the Microsoft HoloLens to complete the mission in an augmented reality environment. This paper will present findings of how perceived teaming efficacy and performance relate to mission performance and workload in the two technologies.