We have become acquainted with the fact that cognition in the work system is not confined to human individuals as part of the operating force. In addition, the designer can make use of artificial cognition in terms of ACUs which may appear as part of the operating force or the operation-suporting means. This brings up the issue of cognitive teaming between these different kinds of cognitive units in whatever configuration. With the advent of multi-agent systems the issue of cognitive teaming has become a major design issue as opposed to the analysis issue which dominated the work on human team structures in the past. There is a great deal of literature in that field which is pushed by the necessities in agent technology, although this segment in agent technology is still not fully consolidated. This becomes evident in the terminology which is still not a unitary one. In essence, we follow the elaboration on this topic of in the following. The underlying idea of cognitive teaming in the work system is co-operation. We as humans are used to take advantage of co-operation in our daily life. From experience we know we can accomplish more in a co-operating group as one could accomplish with the same number of people, who refrain from co-operation. This can be exploited in the context of work systems by means of cognitive teaming. Co-operation can appear in different forms, but will always be based on a common goal or at least a compatible one under all circumstances.
Goals are considered to be incompatible, if achieving one means that another one, which should also be pursued at the same time, cannot be achieved. Cooperation within a group can be made explicit by the formation of teams. The team members are cognitive units, humans or ACUs. The co-operation of team members can be very simple with only some form of task dependency, however in many cases there are a great deal of activity interdependencies among the team members which can make co-operation rather complex. Then, co-operation might demand for supplementary activities of the team members to account for activity interdependencies. This can be subsumed by what we call co-ordination. Finally, communication is a means for co-ordinating by exchanging information among team members. Based on these introductory remarks, in the following we get acquainted with further details on different forms of co-operation, team structures, the necessity of co-ordination and ensuing demand for communication, and how this can be achieved. In the context of multi-agent systems, it has been defined that a cooperation situation exists, if one of the following two conditions holds:
1. The addition of a new agent makes it possible to differentially increase the performance levels of the group.
2. The action of the agents serves to avoid or to solve potential or actual conflicts.
The latter condition might need some explanation. It defines the situation that despite of the addition of a new agent no differential increase of the group performance is achieved in situations free of conflicts, but that the potential of avoiding or resolving conflicts has been increased. In this sense co-operation is not increasing performance, it rather moderates the reduction of performance in case of conflicts. We also follow this study as to his nomenclature for the classification of co-operation between work system players in different interaction situations where immediate actions are demanded. Co-operation assumes compatible or common goals, although the kind of co-operation depends on the degree of activity interdependencies and on whether there are sufficient resources and team member capabilities (knowledge and/or skills). Since sufficiency in both resources and capabilities of a single team member makes co-operation pointless, a study distinguishes between three types of co-operation, namely simple collaboration, obstruction, and co-ordinated collaboration. In this order the level of activity interdependencies involved among the co-operating team members is reflected, thereby beginning with the lowest level. A team may exercise more than one type of co-operation in the course of work. Simple collaboration is featured by sufficient resources and insufficient capabilities. This corresponds to the case that tasks are allocated to team members, that none of the team members is skillful enough to do the work alone, and that there is very little interdependency among the co-operating parties, because there is about no potential of resource and authorization conflicts. This kind of collaboration is typical for a team of specialists who can work rather independently in parallel or in series.
This can include that the team members allocate tasks among themselves and share information in the course of work. As an appropriate example of the domain of vehicle guidance and control we refer here to the rescue of shipwrecked mariners, for instance, including both a crew of a specially equipped search airplane on the one hand and a rescue helicopter crew on the other hand. Each of these parties has got its own capabilities. They exchange information with each other to do the job, in particular, when the crew of the search plane informs the rescue helicopter crew about the co-ordinates of the find when it is discovered. Since there is no overlap in capabilities and no coincidence in the demand of not sharable resources, there is almost no need for co-ordination. Obstruction stands for a type of co-operation situation which is featured by insufficient resources, sufficient capabilities, and less organized co-ordination. This is usually the case, if there are team members who are dependent on the same resource. Then, part of the co-operation within the team is the endeavour to commonly find a solution that the team members concerned can proceed with least loss of performance. Here, co-operation is typified by the use of techniques of reactive online co-ordination while observing the other's actions. Obstruction is characteristic of situations which are pertinent to the second of the two conditions mentioned earlier according to others, which define a co-operation situation. Finally, co-ordinated collaboration usually has to be considered, if there are insufficient resources. The capabilities of the individual work team members might but do not have to be insufficient, too. Possibly there might even changes of their roles, if necessary. It works on the basis of pre-organized or/and online managed co-ordination in the light of the limited resources. That can include the allocation of roles among the team members to avoid resource conflicts by organisational design.
A typical example of a team which carries out co-ordinated collaboration to a great extent is that of a two-man pilot crew in a commercial transport aircraft. The two pilots have different roles as pilot flying and pilot not flying. Only the pilot flying can act on aircraft controls. The pilot not flying is responsible of an assisting role with tasks like flight plan preparation and communicating with agencies outside the aircraft like air traffic control. The capabilities of both pilots are about the same, such that they can change their roles with each other in certain situations, if appropriate. A team may exercise more than one type of co-operation in the course of work. Even with only one task being executed the form of co-operation may switch from type to type, also from mode to mode like from co-operation to independence and vice versa. Thereby only work situations with compatible goals of the team members are being discussed. In this context, for instance, a study identifies an additional co-operation situation of so-called debative co-operation with partially independent work of the team members. This can happen when they are to work on the same task without resource shortages and have about equivalent levels of capabilities. In the first place they are working independently to provide a proposal for the solution of the given task.
In due time, they compare the results and decide on the best proposal. This will be executed. This type of co-operation makes only sense for human- or human-machine teams, if the task is a rather complex one, if poor solutions are not sufficiently improbable, and if there is enough time for this debative procedure. We can conclude that debative cooperation is characteristic for problem solving in a team with temporary independence of the team members, for instance. This kind of co-operation might also evolve in the airliner cockpit in certain rare situations. Having introduced ACUs into the work system both as part of the operating force and as operation-supporting means opens up the potential of co-operation within the work system in terms of cognitive teaming in principally two ways in addition to human-human co-operation:
(1) ACUs being part of the operating force could deliberately co-operate with the human operators for the sake of best work process performance. This kind of ACUs take initiatives on their own in order to have the work system comply with the work objective.
(2) There might be several ACUs as semi-autonomous systems as part of the operation-supporting means in a work system, which could accomplish in co-operation with each other a task given to them by the operating force. It should be noted at this point that also co-operation with or between other given cognitive entities might be possible.
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