Team coordination and effectiveness in human-autonomy teaming

In the past, team coordination dynamics have been explored using nonlinear dynamical systems (NDS) methods, but the relationship between team coordination dynamics and team performance for all-human teams was assumed to be linear. The current study examines team coordination dynamics with an extended version of the NDS methods and assumes that its relationship with team performance for human-autonomy teams (HAT) is nonlinear. In this study, three team conditions are compared with the goals of better understanding how team coordination dynamics differ between all-human teams and HAT and how these dynamics relate to team performance and team situation awareness. Each condition was determined based on manipulation of the pilot role: In the first condition (synthetic) the pilot role was played by a synthetic agent, in the second condition (control) it was a randomly assigned participant, and in the third condition (experimenter) it was an expert who used a role specific coordination script. NDS indices revealed that synthetic teams were rigid, followed by experimenter teams, who were metastable, and control teams, who were unstable. Experimenter teams demonstrated better team effectiveness (i.e., better team performance and team situation awareness) than control and synthetic teams. Team coordination stability is related to team performance and team situation awareness in a nonlinear manner with optimal performance and situation awareness associated with metastability coupled with flexibility. This result means that future development of synthetic teams should address these coordination dynamics, specifically, rigidity in coordination.