Strengthening Teamwork for Robust Operations in Novel Groups (STRONG)

The future vision for the U.S. Army includes teams of humans and intelligent agents working together to accomplish missions. The U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) has established this new collaborative program, Strengthening Teamwork for Robust Operations in Novel Groups (STRONG), with the goal of developing the foundation for enhanced teamwork within heterogeneous human-intelligent agent teams. This collaborative venture will bring together diverse, multidisciplinary expertise to support scientific breakthroughs relevant to specific and critical scientific questions that must be addressed to enable this future vision.

STRONG focuses directly on coordination and cooperation in human-agent teams via individualized and adaptive technologies. It has a specific long-term goal to identify and implement the fundamental research necessary to develop individualized, adaptive technologies that promote effective teamwork in novel groups of humans and intelligent agents. This effort addresses the teamwork (states and processes) that is critical to the future vision of human-agent teaming in the military. Decostanza et al. (IEEE, 2018; https://brain.ieee.org/brain-storm/enhancing-human-agent-teaming/) provide a detailed vision and discussion of some of the scientific questions critical to achieving this goal. Importantly, this interactive paper also provides a public forum for commentary and feedback from the scientific community at large and will serve as a valuable resource for understanding the research objectives of this program.