Adaptive Allocation of Decision Making Responsibility between Supervisor and Computer

Abstract

Multi-task situations where supervisor and computer have intersecting decision making responsibilities are discussed. Adaptive allocation of task responsibility is espoused and formulated as a multi-queue, multi-server situation with a pre-emptive but non-competitive service discipline. Average delay in task performance and percent of decisions performed by the computer are predicted via simulation as a function of number of tasks, human-computer speed mismatch, and probabilities of various types of computer error. Prerequisites to the real-world realization of adaptive human-computer multi-task systems are considered and two laboratory investigations in this area are discussed.