Two Heads Are Better Than One: A Dimension Space for Unifying Human and Artificial Intelligence in Shared Control

Shared control is an emerging interaction paradigm in which a human and an AI partner collaboratively control a system. Shared control unifies human and artificial intelligence, making the human’s interactions with computers more accessible, safe, precise, effective, creative, and playful. This form of interaction has independently emerged in contexts as varied as mobility assistance, driving, surgery, and digital games. These domains each have their own problems, terminology, and design philosophies. Without a common language for describing interactions in shared control, it is difficult for designers working in one domain to share their knowledge with designers working in another. To address this problem, we present a dimension space for shared control, based on a survey of 55 shared control systems from six different problem domains. This design space analysis tool enables designers to classify existing systems, make comparisons between them, identify higher-level design patterns, and imagine solutions to novel problems.