TY - JOUR
T1 - Agent Transparency
T2 - A Review of Current Theory and Evidence
AU - Bhaskara, Adella
AU - Skinner, Michael
AU - Loft, Shayne
PY - 2020/6
Y1 - 2020/6
N2 - As machines and agents become more autonomous, it has been increasingly clear to human factors/ergonomics researchers and practitioners that agent transparency is a critical issue for effective human-agent teaming. Transparency methods can provide the foundation for establishing shared awareness and shared intent between humans and intelligent machines. However, to date, the existing body of research on agent transparency has not been systematically documented. The purpose of this article is to summarize and evaluate current psychological theories and empirical evidence regarding effective agent transparency in human-autonomy teaming. We start by examining how transparency has been operationalized in the literature by discussing the two prominent theoretical frameworks of human-autonomy teaming. We then present a review of the empirical findings concerning how transparency affects key human-autonomy teaming variables, such as operator accuracy, decision time, situation awareness, perceived usability, and workload. This article includes an overview of the experimental tasks, scenarios, and interfaces that have been used in past studies and synthesizes how transparency has been operationalized and manipulated by prior studies. We then summarize the results and conclude by providing key recommendations for future research.
AB - As machines and agents become more autonomous, it has been increasingly clear to human factors/ergonomics researchers and practitioners that agent transparency is a critical issue for effective human-agent teaming. Transparency methods can provide the foundation for establishing shared awareness and shared intent between humans and intelligent machines. However, to date, the existing body of research on agent transparency has not been systematically documented. The purpose of this article is to summarize and evaluate current psychological theories and empirical evidence regarding effective agent transparency in human-autonomy teaming. We start by examining how transparency has been operationalized in the literature by discussing the two prominent theoretical frameworks of human-autonomy teaming. We then present a review of the empirical findings concerning how transparency affects key human-autonomy teaming variables, such as operator accuracy, decision time, situation awareness, perceived usability, and workload. This article includes an overview of the experimental tasks, scenarios, and interfaces that have been used in past studies and synthesizes how transparency has been operationalized and manipulated by prior studies. We then summarize the results and conclude by providing key recommendations for future research.
KW - agent transparency
KW - Automation
KW - autonomous systems
KW - human-agent interaction
KW - human-autonomy teaming
KW - unmanned autonomous vehicles
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85079061290&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/THMS.2020.2965529
DO - 10.1109/THMS.2020.2965529
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85079061290
SN - 2168-2291
VL - 50
SP - 215
EP - 224
JO - IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems
JF - IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems
IS - 3
M1 - 8982042
ER -