Aquaticus: Publicly Available Datasets from a Marine Human-Robot Teaming Testbed

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce publicly available human-robot teaming datasets captured during the summer 2018 season using our Aquaticus testbed. Our Aquaticus testbed is designed to examine the interactions between human-human and human-robot teammates while situated in the marine environment in their own vehicles. In particular, we assess these interactions while humans and fully autonomous robots play a competitive game of capture the flag on the water. Our testbed is unique in that the humans are situated in the field with their fully autonomous robot teammates in vehicles that have similar dynamics. Having a competition on the water reduces the safety concerns and cost of performing similar experiments in the air or on the ground. By having the competitions on the water, we create a complex, dynamic, and partially observable view of the world for participants while in their motorized kayak. The main modality for teammate interaction is audio to better simulate the experience of real-world tactical situations – ie fighter pilots talking to each other over radios. We have released our complete datasets publicly so that we can enable researchers throughout the HRI community that do not have access to such a testbed and may have expertise other than our own to leverage our datasets to perform their own analysis and contribute to the HRI community.