In the contemporary operational environment, U.S. Soldiers routinely conduct military operations with unmanned systems. Typically, these systems are used to conduct Improvised Explosive Device (IED) interrogation, and Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) surveillance, and reconnaissance. Current unmanned systems operate non-autonomously and in a physically separate location from their human teammates. Although the physical augmentation of human Fire Teams by unmanned systems during combat offers a logical extension of this use the U.S. Army does not currently integrate unmanned systems into mixed-initiative team operations or training. The impact of integrating an unmanned system with a human Fire Team represents a critical issue for the U.S. Army.

To investigate the effect on team performance when a non-autonomous unmanned system is integrated into a human team during training, the U.S. Army's Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) SFC Paul Ray Smith Simulation & Training Technology Center (STTC), in partnership with the Institute for Simulation and Training at the University of Central Florida, has begun studies in which a human team member is replaced with an unmanned Remote Weapon System (RWS) prototype. At two U.S. Army installations, trials were conducted with trained Fire Teams using the Engagement Skills Trainer 2000 (EST 2000), a virtual training simulation supporting realistic collective training. The EST 2000 was utilized to investigate performance differences between Fire Teams who were either fully manned by humans or when one team member was replaced by a RWS prototype. This paper describes the motivation for the investigation, the experimental plan and methodology, some preliminary findings, and the impact on Human-Robot Interactions (HRI). Research results supplied by this study will serve as a foundation for the development of operational and training strategies to enhance the integration of unmanned systems into human teams.