Autonomous agents require interfaces to define their interactions with humans. The coupling between agents and humans is often limited, with disjoint goals between the agent interface and its associated autonomous components. This leads to a gap in human interaction relative to agent capabilities. We seek to aid interface designs by clarifying agent capabilities within an interface context. A taxonomy was developed that can help elucidate the agent’s affordances and constraints that guide interface design. Moreover, the descriptors employed in the taxonomy can serve as a common language to support dialog between agent and interface developers, resulting in improved autonomous systems that support human-autonomy coordination.

Highly capable multiple robot architectures often resort to micromanagement to provide enhanced cooperative abilities, sacrificing individual autonomy. Conversely, multi-robot architectures that maintain individual autonomy are often limited in their cooperative abilities.  This article presents a modified three layer architecture that solves both of these issues.  The addition of a Coordinator layer to a three-layered approach provides a platform-independent interface for coordination on tasks and takes advantage of individual autonomy to improve coordination capabilities.  This reduces communication overhead versus many multi-robot architecture designs and allows for more straightforward resizing of the robot collective and increased individual autonomy.