Hierarchical Human-in-the loop Control Systems: An Application for Tactile Interfaces and Adjustable Autonomy.

The last few years have witnessed major changes both in the traditional view of artificial intelligence (AI) and in how humans interact with machines. An increasing number of researchers have been shifting their efforts towards human-centered computing, to create smarter systems and interfaces to support and leverage human capabilities. This paper introduces a research effort to develop an intelligent control system with adjustable autonomy to augment human activities on complex, high workload environments. This system is based on a multi-modular, hierarchical, variable structure control system, integrated with conventional and novel tactile displays to assist and monitor the complex plant composed by human and machine.