A joint human-automation cognitive system to support rapid decision-making in hostile environments

Honeywell has designed a joint human-computer cognitive system to support rapid decision making demands of dismounted soldiers. In highly networked environments the sheer magnitude of communication amid multiple tasks could overwhelm individual soldiers. Key cognitive bottlenecks constrain information flow and the performance of decision-making, especially under stress. The adaptive decision-support system mitigates non-optimal human performance via automation when the system detects a breakdown in the human's cognitive state. The human's cognitive state is assessed in real-time via a suite of neuro-physiological and physiological sensors. Adaptive mitigation strategies can include task management, optimizing information presentation via modality management, task sharing, and task loading. Mitigations are designed with consideration for both the costs and benefits of intermittent augmentation. The paper describes the system development and evolution, explorations of usable cognitive mitigation strategies, and four evaluations that show adaptive automaton can effectively, mitigate human decision-making performance at extremes (overload and underload) of workload.