Collaboration Patterns Ontology for Human-Machine Decision Support

Alexander V. Smirnov, Tatiana Levashova

Abstract: Collaboration of humans and machines when they complement capabilities of each other is becoming increasingly relevant. Recurring problems often arise in the collaboration process. Collaboration patterns that provide reusable efficient and proven solutions for recurring problems is a means to facilitate organization of joint activities for specific collaboration goals such as decision support. Existing studies on collaboration patterns make it clear that collaboration faces problems of diverse classes. The paper proposes a holistic view on human-machine collaboration relatively to the decision support domain where a human-machine environment processes a task that the user deals with as a decision support problem. During task processing, humans and machines use collaboration patterns when they intend to achieve goals for which the patterns propose solutions. A collaboration patterns ontology supports the choice of a kind of pattern that the collaborators can use to accomplish a specif