Crew Resource Management for Automated Teammates (CRM-A)

Crew Resource Management (CRM) is the application of human factors knowledge and skills to ensure that teams make effective use of all resources. This includes ensuring that pilots bring in opinions of other teammates and utilize their unique capabilities. CRM was originally developed 40 years ago in response to a number of airline accidents in which the crew was found to be at fault. The goal was to improve teamwork among airline cockpit crews. The notion of "team" was later expanded to include cabin crew and ground resources. CRM has also been adopted by other industries, most notably medicine. Automation research now finds itself faced with similar issues to those faced by aviation 40 years ago: how to create a more robust system by making full use of both the automation and its human operators. With advances in machine intelligence, processing speed and cheap and plentiful memory, automation has advanced to the point that it can and should be treated as a teammate to fully take advantage of its capabilities and contributions to the system. This area of research is known as Human-Autonomy Teaming (HAT). Research on HAT has identified reusable patterns that can be applied in a wide range of applications. These patterns include features such as bi-directional communication and working agreements. This paper will explore the synergies between CRM and HAT. We believe that HAT research has much to learn from CRM and that there are benefits to expanding CRM to cover automation

Nationalism, Patriotism And Multinational Decision-Making Competence: Evidence From A Situation Judgment Test

Multiple factors may influence Warfighters’ ability to team effectively with personnel from other nations in joint military operations. The present study (N = 696) used a situation judgement test (SJT) to assess multinational decision-making competence. We hypothesized that both social identity and general decision-making competencies would be associated with SJT performance. Performance was associated with lower nationalism, and with decision-making competencies including application of decision rules and knowledge of social norms. Multivariate analyses suggested social identity and decision-making competence predicted performance independently, although nationalism and competence were negatively associated. These findings suggest that training strategies for Warfighters might identify the individual’s strengths and weaknesses, and tailor explicit instruction and virtual learning scenarios accordingly

Evaluating the effectiveness of a novel team development intervention on teamwork

The aim of the present research was to determine whether a brief, domain agnostic team training intervention could improve the teamwork of newly formed teams. Eight teams of five participants received training in submarine command and control before being randomly assigned to receive either a teamwork training intervention, or a cognitively matched control. Teamwork behaviors were measured during task performance pre- and post-intervention via observer-rated frequency counts. Preliminary analyses suggest that teams who received this novel intervention improved teamwork behaviors to a greater extent than control teams