Human-Robot Teaming Challenges for the Military and First Response

The integration of more artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled robots for the military and first response domains is necessary to support long-duration deployments in uncertain and dynamic environments while lessening humans' exposure to threats and dangers. The effective integration of AI-enabled robots as teammates with humans will provide support and enhance overall mission performance; however, the majority of current research on human-robot interaction focuses only on the robot team supervisor. The true integration of robots into military and first response missions will require a breadth of human roles that span from the highest command level to the dismounted in situ personnel working directly with robots. All human roles within the hierarchy must understand and maintain direct control of the robot teammates. This article maps existing human roles from the literature to a military mission, presents technical challenges associated with this future human-robot teaming, and provides potential solutions and recommendations to propel the field forward toward human-robot teams that can achieve domain-relevant missions.