A Research Approach to Shared Mental Models and Situation Assessment in Future Robot Teams

Understanding team cognition requires a multifaceted research approach, aimed at understanding individual and team cognition within and across humans and agents. Measurement and prediction of mental models and situation awareness (SA) of humans, robotic agents, and teams are needed to understand the knowledge required for advanced human-robot team performance. In this paper, we present a research approach to understanding shared mental models (SMMs) and SA with respect to human-robot teams. Having shared and accurate mental models will allow for human and robotic teammates to understand each other’s roles and tasks and also provide a level of predictive behavior that allows teammates to anticipate each other’s needs. Incorporating robotic agents’ input into team SA will improve the adaptive capability of the team. Combined with SA, SMMs can provide a deeper understanding of the happenings in the mission environment.