Enabling technology for human collaboration.

This report summarizes the results of a five-month LDRD late start project which explored the potential of enabling technology to improve the performance of small groups. The purpose was to investigate and develop new methods to assist groups working in high consequence, high stress, ambiguous and time critical situations, especially those for which it is impractical to adequately train or prepare. A testbed was constructed for exploratory analysis of a small group engaged in tasks with high cognitive and communication performance requirements. The system consisted of five computer stations, four with special devices equipped to collect physiologic, somatic, audio and video data. Test subjects were recruited and engaged in a cooperative video game. Each team member was provided with a sensor array for physiologic and somatic data collection while playing the video game. We explored the potential for real-time signal analysis to provide information that enables emergent and desirable group behavior and improved task performance. The data collected in this study included audio, video, game scores, physiological, somatic, keystroke, and mouse movement data. The use of self-organizing maps (SOMs) was explored to search for emergent trends in the physiological data as it correlated with the video, audio and game scores. This exploration resulted in the development of two approaches for analysis, to be used concurrently, an individual SOM and a group SOM. The individual SOM was trained using the unique data of each person, and was used to monitor the effectiveness and stress level of each member of the group. The group SOM was trained using the data of the entire group, and was used to monitor the group effectiveness and dynamics. Results suggested that both types of SOMs were required to adequately track evolutions and shifts in group effectiveness. Four subjects were used in the data collection and development of these tools. This report documents a proof of concept study, and its observations are preliminary. Its main purpose is to demonstrate the potential for the tools developed here to improve the effectiveness of groups, and to suggest possible hypotheses for future exploration