Tech Grove Connect – Do I Trust You?? Effects of Trust Calibration on Human-Machine Team Performance in Operational Environments

Join us for the second NTSA/Tech Grove Connect webinar of 2024 spotlighting the Best Paper nominee in the HPAE committee from I/ITSEC 2023. This month, we focus on a growing dilemma in military training and operational environments as AI is increasingly adopted... how do we measure the presence or lack of trust? Measuring mission-critical trust between human operators and collaborative synthetic teammates is a DoD priority for achieving third-offset goals, accelerating automation design and training for human-machine teams (HMTs), and supporting next-generation multi-domain warfare. Achieving proper trust calibration has long been a primary mechanism by which HMT performance could be maximized by avoiding system distrust and over-trust, but this requires real-time trust assessment. The current study establishes the relationship between HMT trust, workload, and performance in a Search and Rescue (SAR) paradigm where human operators supervise intelligent Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) assets in a constructive synthetic environment. A novel trust measure was developed and piloted in this experiment to precisely measure subjective trust variations across time and in conjunction with target task elements. Results demonstrated that the novel trust measure was effective in capturing participants’ real-time confidence in the recommendations provided. This experiment is unique as it provides a foundation for a real-time self-report measure of trust that can be directly compared to concurrent physiological measures. Study findings further discuss intervention techniques to maintain proper trust calibration in operational environments.