IBM ITA: Human-Agent Teamwork Models

Mailing address:
Carnegie Mellon University
Robotics Institute
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Associated center: CIMDS
Associated lab/group: Advanced Agent-Robotics Technology Lab

Project Description

The focus of this project is to develop models of human-agent teamwork for implementation in software agent systems. Both human collaboration and software agent collaboration have been thoroughly studied, but there is relatively little prior work on hybrid human-agent teamwork. Some research has identified the roles that agents could play in hybrid teams (e.g. supporting individual team members, being a teammate, or supporting the team as a whole). Some other work has investigated trust concepts as the fundamental building block for effective human-agent teamwork, or posited the types of shared knowledge that promote mutual understanding between cooperating humans and agents. However many of the facets of human agent teamwork models, such as communication protocols for forming mutual intelligibility, performing team monitoring to assess progress, forming joint goals, addressing task interdependencies in hybrid teamwork, are still unexplored. This project is part of IBM's International Technology Alliance in Network and Information Sciences (ITA), a consortium of leading academic and industry partners performing research in network-centric systems.

Publications

G. Sukthankar, K. Sycara, J.A. Giampapa, C. Burnett, and A. Preece, "Communications for Agent-based Human Team Support," in Organizations in Multi-Agent Systems, Ed. V. Dignum, IGI-Global, 2009.

S. Okamoto, K. Sycara, and P. Scerri, "Personal Assistants for Human Organizations," in Multi-Agent Systems - Semantics and Dynamics of Organizational Models, Ed. V. Dignum, IGI-Global, 2009.

C. Burnett, D. Masato, M. McCallum, T.J. Norman, J.A. Giampapa, M. Kollingbaum, and K. Sycara, "Agent Support for Mission Planning Under Policy Constraints," in Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference of the International Technology Alliance, London, UK, September 2008.

G. Sukthankar and K. Sycara, "Hypothesis Pruning and Ranking for Large Plan Recognition Problems," in
Proceedings of the Twenty-Third AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-08), June 2008.

G. Sukthankar and K. Sycara, "Robust and Efficient Plan Recognition for Dynamic Multi-agent Teams" (Short Paper), in Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2008), International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, May 2008.

M. Kollingbaum, I.J. Jureta, W. Vasconcelos, and K. Sycara, "Automated Requirements-Driven Definition of Norms for the Regulation of Behavior in Multi-Agent Systems," in Proceedings of the AISB 2008 Workshop on Behaviour Regulation in Multi-Agent Systems, Aberdeen, Scotland, U.K., April 2008.

G. Sukthankar and K. Sycara, "Efficient Plan Recognition for Dynamic Multi-agent Teams," in Proceedings of the Grace Hopper Conference, October 2007.

G. Sukthankar, K. Sycara, J.A. Giampapa, C. Burnett, and A. Preece, "Towards a Model of Agent-Assisted Team Search," in Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Technology Alliance in Network and Information Science, September 2007.

G. Sukthankar and K. Sycara, "Policy Recognition for Multi-Player Tactical Scenarios," in Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS), May 2007.

K. Sycara and G. Sukthankar, "Literature Review of Teamwork Models," Tech. Report CMU-RI-TR-06-50, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, November 2006.

Personnel

Current Personnel:
Katia Sycara
Joseph A. Giampapa
Martin Kollingbaum

Past Personnel:
Gita Sukthankar
Christopher Burnett