To introduce this special issue of shared and cooperative control, we will look into history of tools in cooperation between humans and aim to unify the plethora of related concepts and definitions that have been proposed in recent years, such as shared control, human–machine cooperation and cooperative guidance and control. Concretely, we provide definitions to relate these concepts and sketch a unifying framework of shared and cooperative control that sees the different concepts as different perspectives or foci on a common design space of shared intentionality, control and cooperation between humans and machines. One working hypothesis which the article explores is that shared control can be understood as cooperation at the control layer, while human–machine cooperation can include shared control, but can also extend towards cooperation at higher layers, e.g., of guidance and navigation, of maneuvers and goals. The relationship between shared control and human–machine cooperation is compared to the relationship between the sharp, pointy tip and the (blunt) shaft of a spear. Shared control is where cooperation comes sharply into effect at the control layer, but to be truly effective it should be supported by cooperation on all layers beyond the operational layer, e.g., on the tactical and strategic layer. A fourth layer addresses the meta-communication about the cooperation and supports the other three layers in a traversal way.

Emerging technologies in the field of automatization meanwhile enable partially and highly automated vehicles in the aviation and automotive domains, where the human operators are assisted or (partially/temporarily) replaced in their tasks by advanced automation systems. Nevertheless due to technological limitations and ethical reasons, full autonomous vehicles in both domains might not be realizable in the near future. Instead system designs, which enable shared and cooperative guidance and control of vehicles by human operators and automation systems could be more feasible solutions. This paper sketches a common framework of shared and cooperative control that describes the two concepts not as different but as coinciding concepts for the shared intentionality, control and cooperation between humans and machines. A brief overview off developed shared and cooperative control designs in the aviation and ground vehicle domain is given.