Joining the blunt and the pointy end of the spear: towards a common framework of joint action, human–machine cooperation, cooperative guidance and control, shared, traded and supervisory control

Frank Flemisch (1, 2) , David Abbink (3) , Makoto Itoh (4) , Marie-Pierre Pacaux-Lemoine (5) , Gina Wessel (1)

1 RWTH - Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen University
2 Fraunhofer FKIE - Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics
3 TU Delft - Delft University of Technology
4 Université de Tsukuba = University of Tsukuba
5 LAMIH - Laboratoire d'Automatique, de Mécanique et d'Informatique industrielles et Humaines - UMR 8201

To introduce this special issue of shared and cooperative control, we will look into history of tools in cooperation between humans and aim to unify the plethora of related concepts and definitions that have been proposed in recent years, such as shared control, human–machine cooperation and cooperative guidance and control. Concretely, we provide definitions to relate these concepts and sketch a unifying framework of shared and cooperative control that sees the different concepts as different perspectives or foci on a common design space of shared intentionality, control and cooperation between humans and machines. One working hypothesis which the article explores is that shared control can be understood as cooperation at the control layer, while human–machine cooperation can include shared control, but can also extend towards cooperation at higher layers, e.g., of guidance and navigation, of maneuvers and goals. The relationship between shared control and human–machine cooperation is compared to the relationship between the sharp, pointy tip and the (blunt) shaft of a spear. Shared control is where cooperation comes sharply into effect at the control layer, but to be truly effective it should be supported by cooperation on all layers beyond the operational layer, e.g., on the tactical and strategic layer. A fourth layer addresses the meta-communication about the cooperation and supports the other three layers in a traversal way.

Mots clés: Human–machine systems; Human–machine cooperation; Joint action; Shared control

Domaines: Automatique / Robotique; Interface homme-machine [cs.HC]

Frank Flemisch, David Abbink, Makoto Itoh, Marie-Pierre Pacaux-Lemoine, Gina Wessel. Joining the blunt and the pointy end of the spear: towards a common framework of joint action, human–machine cooperation, cooperative guidance and control, shared, traded and supervisory control. Cognition, Technology and Work, 2019, 21 (4), pp.555-568. ⟨10.1007/s10111-019-00576-1⟩. ⟨hal-03644221⟩