The Playbook™ Approach to Adaptive Automation

Abstract

SIFT has pioneered a human-automation integration architecture, called Playbook™, based on a shared model of the tasks in the domain. This shared task model provides a means of human-automation communication about plans, goals, methods and resource usage—a process akin to referencing plays in a sports team's playbook. The Playbook enables human operators to interact with subordinate systems with the same flexibility as with well-trained human subordinates, thus allowing for adaptive automation. We describe this approach and its application in an ongoing project called Playbook-enhanced Variable Autonomy Control System™ (P-VACS).