Modeling Team Interaction and Decision-Making in Agile Human–Machine Teams: Quantum and Dynamical Systems Perspective

In this study, we define team agility as a function of exploration and exploitation of team coordination. Based on these two coordination concepts, we examined interactive decision-making in a dynamic task environment by applying: first, the principles of quantum cognition for the decision-making processes at the confluence of teamwork and taskwork (to discern the effects of ontic uncertainty for each human team member in the case of having incomplete teamwork) and second, nonlinear dynamical systems modeling for the teamwork (to capture epistemic uncertainty). In this study, there were the following three conditions based on manipulation of the pilot role: first, synthetic condition—the pilot role was played by a synthetic agent, second, control condition—it was a randomly assigned participant, and third, experimenter condition—it was an expert who used a role-specific coordination script. Overall findings indicate that when teams in the experimenter condition come across the targets, they tend to explore alternatives by coordinating as a team rather than exploiting existing team strategies, which may not work best for the situation at hand. In contrast, teams in control and synthetic conditions tended more toward exploitation than exploration in coordination. We consider this a sign of agility in teamwork.