Neera Jain

Joseph M. Pisani, Christopher T. Aksland, Philip M. Renkert et al.

Modern energy systems in vehicles and built infrastructure are governed by high-dimensional dynamics spanning multiple physical domains (e.g., electrical, thermal, mechanical) and timescales. This tutorial paper presents a graph-based modeling approach created to facilitate the modeling, analysis, control, estimation, optimization, and design of these systems. Matured and validated through more than a decade of research spanning multiple academic institutions and companies, the graph-based approach combines transient energy conservation with an explicit mathematical representation of the network by which energy is stored and transferred within a system. Following a mathematical overview of graph-based models, examples of multi-domain component and system models from the recent literature are presented, including single-phase thermal systems, two-phase thermal systems, and electro-mechanical systems. This is followed by a survey of recent applications for decentralized and hierarchical model predictive control, design optimization, and control co-design. Lastly, the paper describes an open-source toolbox created to facilitate the generation and analysis of graph-based models.

Kumar Akash, Neera Jain, Teruhisa Misu

Properly calibrated human trust is essential for successful interaction between humans and automation. However, while human trust calibration can be improved by increased automation transparency, too much transparency can overwhelm human workload. To address this tradeoff, we present a probabilistic framework using a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) for modeling the coupled trust-workload dynamics of human behavior in an action-automation context. We specifically consider hands-off Level 2 driving automation in a city environment involving multiple intersections where the human chooses whether or not to rely on the automation. We consider automation reliability, automation transparency, and scene complexity, along with human reliance and eye-gaze behavior, to model the dynamics of human trust and workload. We demonstrate that our model framework can appropriately vary automation transparency based on real-time human trust and workload belief estimates to achieve trust calibration.

Kumar Akash, Griffon McMahon, Tahira Reid et al.

Human trust in automation plays an essential role in interactions between humans and automation. While a lack of trust can lead to a human's disuse of automation, over-trust can result in a human trusting a faulty autonomous system which could have negative consequences for the human. Therefore, human trust should be calibrated to optimize human-machine interactions with respect to context-specific performance objectives. In this article, we present a probabilistic framework to model and calibrate a human's trust and workload dynamics during his/her interaction with an intelligent decision-aid system. This calibration is achieved by varying the automation's transparency---the amount and utility of information provided to the human. The parameterization of the model is conducted using behavioral data collected through human-subject experiments, and three feedback control policies are experimentally validated and compared against a non-adaptive decision-aid system. The results show that human-automation team performance can be optimized when the transparency is dynamically updated based on the proposed control policy. This framework is a first step toward widespread design and implementation of real-time adaptive automation for use in human-machine interactions.

Kumar Akash, Wan-Lin Hu, Neera Jain et al.

Today, intelligent machines \emph{interact and collaborate} with humans in a way that demands a greater level of trust between human and machine. A first step towards building intelligent machines that are capable of building and maintaining trust with humans is the design of a sensor that will enable machines to estimate human trust level in real-time. In this paper, two approaches for developing classifier-based empirical trust sensor models are presented that specifically use electroencephalography (EEG) and galvanic skin response (GSR) measurements. Human subject data collected from 45 participants is used for feature extraction, feature selection, classifier training, and model validation. The first approach considers a general set of psychophysiological features across all participants as the input variables and trains a classifier-based model for each participant, resulting in a trust sensor model based on the general feature set (i.e., a "general trust sensor model"). The second approach considers a customized feature set for each individual and trains a classifier-based model using that feature set, resulting in improved mean accuracy but at the expense of an increase in training time. This work represents the first use of real-time psychophysiological measurements for the development of a human trust sensor. Implications of the work, in the context of trust management algorithm design for intelligent machines, are also discussed.