The Impact of Role Authority and Communication Initiative on HAT Outcomes

Theobjective ofthisstudy wasto understand howrole authority and communication initiative of autonomous agents impact Human-Autonomy Team (HAT) performance, trust, workload, and cohesion. The study employed a 2 (role authority: peer vs.subordinate) x 2 (communication initiative: proactive vs.reactive robot communication) mixed factorial design.Participantsworkedcollaboratively with Boston Dynamic’s Spot robotto conductanin-person search and rescue taskin afield environment.The study revealedthe subordinate role authority condition, where therobot-is-subordinate tothehuman, imposed a higher workload thanthe peer condition, where the robot-is-peertothe human.