Asynchronous Training of Mixed-Role Human Actors in a Partially Observable Environment
Author(s)
Chestnut Chang, Kimberlee
Jensen, Reed
Paleja, Rohan
Polk, Sam
Seater, Rob
Steilberg, Jackson
Schiefelbein, Curran
Scheldrup, Melissa
Gombolay, Matthew
Ramirez, Mabel
Date Issued
September 17, 2025
Journal
ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction
Publisher
ACM
Citation
Kimberlee Chestnut Chang, Reed Jensen, Rohan Paleja, Sam L. Polk, Rob Seater, Jackson Steilberg, Curran Schiefelbein, Melissa Scheldrup, Matthew Gombolay, and Mabel D. Ramirez. 2025. Asynchronous Training of Mixed-Role Human Actors in a Partially Observable Environment. J. Hum.-Robot Interact. Just Accepted (September 2025).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
In cooperative training, humans within a team coordinate on complex tasks, building mental models of their teammates and learning to adapt to teammates' actions in real-time. To reduce the often prohibitive scheduling constraints associated with cooperative training, this article introduces a paradigm for cooperative asynchronous training of human teams in which trainees practice coordination with autonomous teammates rather than humans. We introduce a novel experimental design for evaluating autonomous teammates for use as training partners in cooperative training. We apply this design to a human-subjects experiment where humans are trained with either another human or an autonomous teammate and are evaluated with a new human subject in a new, partially observable, cooperative game developed for this study. Importantly, we employ an unsupervised sequential clustering methodology to partition teammate trajectories from demonstrations performed in the experiment to form a smaller number of training conditions. This results in a simpler experiment design, enabling us to conduct a complex cooperative training human-subjects study in a reasonable amount of time. Through a demonstration of the proposed experimental design, we provide takeaways and design recommendations for future research in the development of cooperative asynchronous training systems utilizing robot surrogates for human teammates.
MIT Department
Lincoln Laboratory
Terms of Use
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Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1145/3766892
