An Open Educational Game for Teaching Human–Autonomy Teaming (HAT)
Exoplanet Explorer is an open-source educational video game designed to support the teaching and study of Human–Autonomy Teaming (HAT).
The game provides a dynamic collaboration environment in which a human player supervises and coordinates a team of autonomous robotic agents operating in a planetary exploration mission.
Unlike traditional case-based teaching materials, Exoplanet Explorer allows learners to interact directly with autonomy, making task interdependencies, coordination breakdowns, and interface transparency issues experientially observable.
The platform serves two complementary purposes:
- Pedagogical tool for teaching Interdependence Analysis
- Lightweight research testbed for studying human–autonomy interaction
The game is explicitly designed to support instruction in:
- Coactive Design, especially Interdependence Analysis (IA)
- Task allocation modeling
- Human–autonomy coordination constraints
- Shared Interface ergonomic design in HAT systems
Typical instructional use includes asking students to:
- Model task allocation between human and robots
- Identify unmet coordination requirements
- Propose interface improvements grounded in HAT principles
- Reflect on autonomy vs. automation distinctions
Archived releases are permanently available via Zenodo:
DOI: (to be added after first release)
You are leading a pioneering mission from a control room on earth to a distant exoplanet.
After deploying a landing module, you supervise a swarm of heterogeneous robots tasked with:
- Mapping unknown terrain
- Gathering resources
- Detecting environmental anomalies
- Searching for traces of a mysterious monolith
Communication constraints, limited resources, and environmental uncertainty create coordination challenges that must be resolved through effective human–autonomy collaboration.
- Download the latest release from the Releases page.
- Extract the folder.
- Run the executable.
Run the following command in your terminal:
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/Exoplanet-Explorer.git
Additional dependencies (if required):
- Godot version: 4.3
- Platform: Windows / Mac / Linux
The platform is under active development.
Planned improvements include:
- Expanded collaboration scenarios
- Improved tutorial scaffolding
- Enhanced interface transparency controls
- Data logging modules for research studies
Feedback from educators and researchers is welcome.
If you use this software for research or teaching, please cite:
Berton, B., & Doyon-Poulin, P. (2026). Exoplanet Explorer (Version 1.0.1) [Computer software]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18651448
This project is released under the MIT License.
See the LICENSE file for details.
Contributions are welcome.
You may:
- Report issues
- Suggest pedagogical improvements
- Propose new autonomy configurations
- Contribute code or documentation
Please open an issue before submitting major feature changes.
Benjamin Berton
PhD Candidate – Human Factors Engineering
Polytechnique Montréal