Concurrent performance of military tasks and robotics tasks: Effects of automation unreliability and individual differences

This study investigated the performance and workload of the combined position of gunner and robotics operator in a simulated military multitasking environment. Specifically, we investigated how aided target recognition (AiTR) capabilities for the gunnery task with imperfect reliability (false-alarm-prone vs. miss-prone) might affect the concurrent robotics and communication tasks. Additionally, we examined whether performance was affected by individual differences in spatial ability and attentional control. Results showed that when the robotics task was simply monitoring the video, participants had the best performance in their gunnery and communication tasks and the lowest perceived workload, compared with the other robotics tasking conditions. There was a strong interaction between the type of AiTR unreliability and participants´ perceived attentional control. Overall, for participants with higher perceived attentional control, false-alarm-prone alerts were more detrimental; for low attentional control participants, conversely, miss-prone automation was more harmful. Low spatial ability participants preferred visual cueing, and high spatial ability participants favored tactile cueing. Potential applications of the findings include personnel selection for robotics operation, robotics user interface designs, and training development.