The Operationalisation of Agent Transparency and Evidence for Its Impact on Key Human-Autonomy Teaming Variables

The growing interest in the use of autonomous systems for both military and commercial applications has been accompanied by a concomitant increase in research involving human-agent interaction. Transparency has been investigated as one factor that could improve human trust in, and appropriate reliance on, autonomous systems. This report provides a review of studies that have examined how the transparency of an autonomous system affects key variables such as operator performance, response time, situation awareness, perceived usability, and subjective workload. Theoretical frameworks that support transparency in autonomous systems including Lyons’ models of transparency (2013) and the Situation Awareness-Based Agent Transparency (SAT) model (Chen et al., 2014) are also presented. Findings from these studies indicate that a certain amount of transparency seemed to improve operator performance, however too much transparency information could also decrease operator performance. Overall, the findings have not been clear-cut in terms of how much and what type of transparency information should be communicated to the operator. Future research should also examine the underlying mechanisms responsible for these transparency effects. RELEASE LIMITATION Approved for public release.