Team Situation Awareness in Next Generation Combat Vehicle

In human-autonomy teams (HATs), the human needs to interact with one or more autonomous agents, and this new type of interaction is different than the existing human-to-human interaction. Next Generation Combat Vehicles (NGCVs), which are envisioned for the U.S. military are associated with the concept of HAT. As NGCVs are in the early stage of development, it is necessary to develop different training methods and measures for team effectiveness. The way team members communicate and task complexity are factors affecting team efficiency. This study analyzes the impact of two interaction strategies and task complexity on team situation awareness among 22 different teams. Teams were randomly assigned different interaction conditions and went through two missions to finish their assigned tasks. Results indicate that the team with the procedural interaction strategy had better team situation awareness according to the Coordinated Awareness of the Situation by Teams (CAST) scores on the artillery calls. However, the difference between the strategies was not found on CAST scores of perturbations, map accuracy, or Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT) scores. Additionally, the impact of task complexity on the team situation awareness was not found. Implications and suggestions for future work are discussed.