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In this extended abstract we present the design, development, and evaluation of a Minecraft-based simulated task environment to conduct human and AI teaming research. With the deluge of AI-driven applications and their infiltration into many activities of daily living, it is becoming necessary to look at ways that humans and AI can work together. There is a tremendous research burden associated with accurately evaluating the best practices and trade-offs when humans and AI have to collaborate together in completing critical tasks. Minecraft offers a low-cost alternative as an early investigating tool for researchers to build answers to emerging research questions before significantly investing in human-AI teaming activities in the real world. We demonstrate successfully via a simple rule-based AI, insights that could highly influence human-AI teaming activities can be derived to improve practical and viable development of protocols and procedures. Our findings indicate that simulated task environments play a critical role in furthering human AI teaming activities. 

Exploration and exploitation are commonly cited in search and rescue scenarios to explain the process by which individuals work in a team and gather information about their environment (exploration) and identify potential solutions and adaptations (exploitation) to pursue successful outcomes. In this paper, we discuss exploration and exploitation as critical design features and highlight the importance of balancing them when designing team-based search and rescue missions. To test the proposed design decisions, we developed a usability study that includes two missions wherein teams consisting of three participants are tasked to rescue victims within a Minecraft-based 3D testbed.