Computational Teaching for Driving via Multi-Task Imitation Learning

Learning motor skills for sports or performance driving is often done with professional instruction from expert human teachers, whose availability is limited. Our goal is to enable automated teaching via a learned model that interacts with the student similar to a human teacher. However, training such automated teaching systems is limited by the availability of high-quality annotated datasets of expert teacher and student interactions that are difficult to collect at scale. To address this data scarcity problem, we propose an approach for training a coaching system for complex motor tasks such as high performance driving via a Multi-Task Imitation Learning (MTIL) paradigm. MTIL allows our model to learn robust representations by utilizing self-supervised training signals from more readily available non-interactive datasets of humans performing the task of interest. We validate our approach with (1) a semi-synthetic dataset created from real human driving trajectories, (2) a professional track driving instruction dataset, (3) a track-racing driving simulator human-subject study, and (4) a system demonstration on an instrumented car at a race track. Our experiments show that the right set of auxiliary machine learning tasks improves performance in predicting teaching instructions. Moreover, in the human subjects study, students exposed to the instructions from our teaching system improve their ability to stay within track limits, and show favorable perception of the model's interaction with them, in terms of usefulness and satisfaction.

Learning Racing From an AI Coach: Effects of Multimodal Autonomous Driving Explanations on Driving Performance, Cognitive Load, Expertise, and Trust

In a pre-post experiment (n = 41), we test the impact of an AI Coach's explanatory communications modeled after the instructions of human driving experts. Participants were divided into four (4) groups to assess two (2) dimensions of the AI coach's explanations: information type ('what' and 'why'-type explanations) and presentation modality (auditory and visual). We directly compare how AI Coaching sessions employing these techniques impact driving performance, cognitive load, confidence, expertise, and trust in an observation learning context. Through interviews, we delineate the learning process of our participants. Results show that an AI driving coach can be useful for teaching performance driving skills to novices. Comparing between groups, we find the type and modality of information influences performance outcomes. We attribute differences to how information directed attention, mitigated uncertainty, and influenced overload experienced by participants. These, in turn, affected how successfully participants were able to learn. Results suggest efficient, modality-appropriate explanations should be opted for when designing effective HMI communications that can instruct without overwhelming. Further, they support the need to align communications with human learning and cognitive processes. Results are synthesized into eight design implications for future autonomous vehicle HMI and AI coach design.