Using a functional architecture to identify human-automation trust needs and design requirements

Abstract

This thesis develops and analyzes the functional architecture for an autonomous unmanned aerial system performing an Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) mission without a continuous communication link to human operators for trust needs. The factors that affect human trust are developed from a literature review covering theory and empirical studies that have investigated the importance of human trust in human-automation interactions. The identified factors are applied to the functional architecture, and the system functions are categorized as Reasoning functions and Non-reasoning functions. Each functional category is analyzed for trust needs by describing how the function's purpose, process, and performance link to human knowledge, perception and beliefs. From the analysis, automation design requirements that link to the identified trust needs are developed. This work highlights the importance of applying human factors analyses in the early stages of the Systems Engineering process for autonomous systems.