Vertical Farm: A Unified Testbed to Address Challenges in Human-Agent Teaming Research
Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction
2025
Abstract
Human–Agent Teaming (HAT) research spans machine learning, HCI, robotics, and cognitive science, but suffers from fragmented testbeds that limit generalization and comparability. We introduce Vertical Farm, a cooperative farming simulator explicitly designed to tackle three key challenges in HAT testbed design: expressiveness (supporting diverse research agendas), unification (enabling standardized benchmarks), and rich team dynamics (capturing the complexity of real-world teaming). Vertical Farm embodies three design principles (composability, human-agent complementarity, and flexible team & role structure) that allow it to support a wide range of experimental configurations, from role negotiation to mixed-initiative control. Together, these contributions provide a blueprint for more unified, expressive, and realistic HAT research.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{li-hai-2025,
title = {Vertical Farm: A Unified Testbed to Address Challenges in Human-Agent Teaming Research},
author = {Li, Ziyu and Hammad, Noor and Zhang, Qiao and Wang, Chunyi and Harpstead, Erik},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.1145/3765766.3765813},
}