Beyond Cooperative Robotics: The Central Role of Interdependence in Coactive Design

This article discusses that the concept of levels of autonomy is incomplete and insufficient as a model for designing complex human-machine teams, largely because it does not sufficiently account for the interdependence among their members. Building on a theory of joint activity, we introduce the notion of coactive design, an approach to human-machine interaction that takes interdependence as the central organizing principle among people and agents working together as a team.