Tag: Dale Richards

Researchers Discuss Need for Teamwork Between Humans and Machines

Panelists: Moderator Dale Richards, senior research fellow in human factors, Coventry University; Danette Allen, senior technologist, Intelligent Flight Systems, NASA; Andrew Lacher, senior principal and unmanned and autonomous research strategist, The MITRE Corp.; David Mindell, founder and CEO, Humatics Corp., and professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

by Hannah Godofsky, AIAA Communications

The relationship between humans and machines is changing to one in which humans and machines need to work as a team, a panel of experts said June 7 at the 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum in Denver.

“Any place where we’re transitioning from automation to autonomy is an opportunity to team between multi-agents, humans and machines in the system,” said Danette Allen, a NASA senior technologist for Intelligent Flight Systems and head of the autonomy incubator at NASA’s Langley Research Center.

She said NASA needs automation.

“All of these new missions have one thing in common, whether they’re Earth-bound or space-bound or planetary-bound, they all need very complex automation and perhaps even autonomy to succeed,” Allen said. “Because we’re talking about distances beyond cislunar. We’re talking about high-latency, very cluttered environment — safety-critical, time-critical systems and decisions that have to be made in uncertainty.”

Andy Lacher, a senior principal at The MITRE Corp., elaborated on human and machine teamwork.

“What we’re really talking about is a partnership, where the human is the senior partner, but the human and the machine have to work together,” he said.

But, he stressed, the human has to be alert and aware in order for a partnership to be safe and reliable.

“The key here is the human can’t be the safety net for the automation,” Lacher said. “The human has to remain vigilant, because when the machine can’t handle it, it hands it back to the human. And sometimes it’s at the most critical or the hardest part.”

Lacher cited examples like automated driving features or underwater robotic exploration to explain why humans need to stay aware even when some aspects of machine operation have been automated.

David Mindell, founder and CEO of Humatics Corp., said there are benefits of working with automated systems as a team.

“Computer chess programs learned how to beat people more than a decade ago,” he explained. “But actually today, the best chess players are people with computers, and they can beat either computers or people alone.”

Mindell gave an example of archeologists who at first were skeptical of a role for automation and robotics in their field but later came to embrace autonomous data collection for their studies.

“We gave them a level of overview of a problem that they couldn’t get in a different way,” he said.

Video

All 2017 AIAA AVIATION Forum Videos

Tomorrow’s Drones Are Amazing, but Obstacles Exist

by David Hodes, Aerospace America contributing writer

Speakers: Andy Lacher, UAS integration research strategist, Mitre; Dale Richards, senior research fellow in human factors, Coventry University

Drones that essentially fly themselves are available now, but there are obstacles, and the future needs humans working with drones, experts said June 16 at the 2016 AIAA Demand for Unmanned Symposium in Washington, D.C.

In the panel, “Visions of the Future,” Andrew Lacher, UAS integration research strategist for Mitre, showed examples of what the future of drones looks like.

First was a drone from Lily, a camera company. He said it’s essentially a flying selfie stick that follows its subject based on criteria the subject programs into a special wrist watch. Though, according to Lacher, the aircraft is really flying itself as it follows its subject.

“This aircraft is picking its flight path, its speed and direction, working to counter wind, and will land itself when it detects that the battery is running low,” Lacher explained.

Another example was the fixed-wing PrecisionHawk robotic airplane. He said the company views itself more as a seller of data than a drone manufacturer because it uses the plane’s camera to gather pictures and other data for agriculture and other similar uses.

Lacher said overall, there is a need to make operating unmanned aerial systems simpler.

“We want to lower user sophistication — make these aerial systems easier to operate so that there is less training on how to use them,” Lacher said. “There is more automation needed in the system, but it needs to still work as a team with a human.”

Dale Richards, senior research fellow in human factors at Coventry University, said U.K. drone rules are similar to the rules in the U.S. (except for maximum flying altitude, which is 400 feet in the U.K. and 500 feet in the U.S.).

“But they consider the users as pilots and not operators,” he said of U.K. rules. “I don’t think that is going to work.”

Lacher said what is really needed is pilotless aircraft, which he called “the future.”

The discussion also touched on autonomous cars. Lacher cited the time a Google autonomous car was pulled over for driving too slowly and the time it faced a woman in an electric wheelchair chasing a duck in the middle of the road.

“It’s these non-normative conditions that need to be thought about,” Lacher said.

All 2016 AIAA AVIATION Forum Videos