Modular Testbed for Human-Autonomy Teaming: A Drone Swarm Firefighting Demonstration

Humans and intelligent systems are increasingly working together in high-stakes domains. To operate as real teammates, these systems require higher levels of autonomy, which is becoming increasingly feasible given rapid technological developments. Consequently, human-autonomy teaming (HAT) has become a key research area. Most HAT studies rely on simulation-based testbeds using simplified agents and tasks. These testbeds are often insufficiently flexible and customizable, limiting researchers in manipulating critical HAT attributes. Furthermore, most testbeds focus on dyadic teams, while real-world applications increasingly involve human interactions with multiple autonomous systems such as drone swarms. Understanding how operators can effectively control such swarms remains a critical challenge. During this demo, we will present our flexible and customizable HAT testbed, showing the example of human-swarm interaction during wildfire response. Attendees will experience controlling drone swarms with action-based and play-based control across varying swarm sizes, illustrating how the testbed facilitates systematic empirical research.