Autonomous Spacecraft Motion Plan Characteristics Influence Perceived Path Appropriateness

Autonomous Rendezvous and Docking maneuvers, performed by two spacecraft joining together in space, are becoming increasingly automated. However, human supervision of the docking spacecraft remains necessary for system failure mitigation, which manifests in manual takeover of the docking spacecraft’s motion control. Previous analysis found that intrinsic characteristics of the motion plans taken by the spacecraft significantly influenced human supervisor manual-takeover performance. This work analyzes how the human supervisor’s observation of the spacecraft’s path traversal compared to the participant’s expectation of path traversal. In this study, participants ( N = 33) monitored a simulation of an autonomous spacecraft attempting to dock at one of two docking stations. Participants were asked about their interpretation of the appropriateness of the path taken by the spacecraft in each trial. Statistically significant relationships were identified between intrinsic characteristics of the motion plan, the human supervisor’s takeover performance, and the human’s interpretation of the path taken.