Flight Testing an Optionally Piloted Aircraft: a Case Study on Trust Dynamics in Human-Autonomy Teaming
This addresses trust dynamics for designers and operators of autonomous systems, but it is incremental as it applies known models to new data without novel methods.
The paper investigated how trust evolves in human-autonomy teaming with an optionally piloted aircraft, analyzing over 200 hours of flight test data from 2021 to 2023 using existing trust models to identify trends during autonomous operations.
This paper examines how trust is formed, maintained, or diminished over time in the context of human-autonomy teaming with an optionally piloted aircraft. Whereas traditional factor-based trust models offer a static representation of human confidence in technology, here we discuss how variations in the underlying factors lead to variations in trust, trust thresholds, and human behaviours. Over 200 hours of flight test data collected over a multi-year test campaign from 2021 to 2023 were reviewed. The dispositional-situational-learned, process-performance-purpose, and IMPACTS homeostasis trust models are applied to illuminate trust trends during nominal autonomous flight operations. The results offer promising directions for future studies on trust dynamics and design-for-trust in human-autonomy teaming.