High Level ‘Tasking Interfaces’ for Uninhabited Combat Air Vehicles
Keywords: Tasking Interface, Mixed Initiative Planning and Control, Task Model, Hierarchical Task Network Planning, Uninhabited Combat Air Vehicles
Abstract: The ongoing debate in the HCI community between direct manipulation and intelligent, automated agents points to a fundamental problem in complex systems. Humans want to remain in charge even if they don’t want to (or can’t) make every action and decision themselves. We have been exploring a middle road through the development of “tasking interfaces”—interfaces which share a task model with a projective planning system to enable human operators to flexibly “call plays” (that is, stipulate plans) at various levels of abstraction, leaving the remainder of the plan to be fleshed out by the planning system. The result is akin to ‘tasking’ a knowledgeable subordinate to whom one can give more or less detailed instructions. We describe a prototype tasking interface for developing mission plans for Uninhabited Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs).