IoBT-MAX: a Multimodal Analytics eXperimentation Testbed for IoBT Research

This paper describes the development and implementation of IoBT-MAX, a multimodal analytics experimentation testbed designed to support research and evaluation of Internet of Battlefield Things (IoBT) technologies. The testbed consists of a distributed set of edge nodes with multimodal sensing and compute capabilities coupled with a high-precision GPS localization system, and a remote monitoring and control platform. The testbed is designed to support research on multiple analytic tasks including object classification, object detection, multiobject tracking, data compression, and communication efficient inference and scheduling. The testbed has been deployed at the Robotics Research Collaboration Campus (R2C2), a DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL) facility, and is a key research instrumentation project of ARL's Internet of Battlefield Things Collaborative Research Alliance.