by C. Martin, D. Schreckenghost, P. Bonasso, D. Kortenkamp, T. Milam, and C. Thronesbery
NASA Johnson Space Center TRACLabs
Abstract
This
paper describes an implemented software prototype for the Distributed
Collaboration and Interaction (DCI) system, which addresses the
challenges of helping humans to act as an integrated part of a
multi-agent system. Human interaction with
agents who act autonomously most of the time, such as a process control
agent in a power plant, has received little attention compared to human
interaction with agents who provide a direct service to humans, such as
information retrieval. This paper describes how liaison agents within
the DCI system can support human interaction with agents that are not
human-centric by design but must be supervised by or coordinated with
humans.
Further,
the DCI prototype supports notification and planning for humans from
the perspective of an organization. It treats humans in this
organization as if they were agents with explicitly modeled roles and
activities related to software agents in the same system. Planning for
humans presents unique challenges because the models represented in
traditional planners do not match well with human mental models. The
DCI prototype is applied in the domain of NASA advanced life support
systems, which are controlled by software agents in an autonomous
fashion with occasional human intervention. (.pdf file) - goto
