Human-Autonomy Teaming Testbed for Research (HATTER)

Advancements in artificial intelligence and autonomy lead to new and different opportunities for human-autonomy collaboration, requiring efficient assessment techniques to evaluate technology models and interaction modalities. Current testbeds meant to support human-autonomy teaming (HAT) technology assessments do not fully meet researcher needs. Researchers experience difficulty making rapid, operationally relevant assessments of design guidelines and interface approaches as part of good design-research processes. To address these challenges, during Phase I we successfully designed and demonstrated Human-Autonomy Teaming Testbed for Research (HATTER), a testbed for researchers to rapidly inform design guidelines and interface components across a range of operational environments (e.g., JADC2). HATTER incorporates cognitive systems engineering–based research approaches and user-centered design techniques to provide a medium-fidelity testbed that accommodates a range of experimental designs within a representative operational environment for effective evaluation of HAT control and display technologies. In Phase II, we propose to extend, develop, and evaluate HATTER by using our scoping requirements definition to extend and refine the design of the researcher interface, finalize the design of and implement the geospatial Joint All Domain (JAD) simulation module, develop the full-scope prototype supporting key functionality, and conduct evaluation activities to assess HATTER’s utility and usability.