Human-Autonomy Teaming in the Battlespace: Trust and The Role of Neuroimaging

An effective Human-Autonomy Team (HAT) is integral to the development and integration of robotic and autonomous systems (RAS) into the battlespace. The use of intelligent decision support systems will bring an inevitable shift in the interaction paradigm between the human and RAS, which needs to be understood in order to design the HAT effectively. There are a variety of different tools and techniques to assist in the design and evaluation of such systems, however many fall short of providing design features for the human, with limited applicability for these techniques to measure key aspects of the HAT, including trust. Neuroimaging modalities, such as functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), present an opportunity to assess the underlying higher cognitive functions associated with the HAT and could assist in guiding the design of an effective team. However, these techniques require validation to ensure their reliability in real-world applications. This paper discusses some recent studies that take steps towards the systematic validation of fNIRS in the context of the HAT, with a particular focus placed on the feasibility of measuring trust. These studies demonstrate the ability to measure key regions of the prefrontal cortex associated with decision-making, and implicate these changes in activity as neural correlates of trust. The findings present a step towards developing an effective toolkit to help design future systems that facilitate an effective HAT.