Civil and Systems Engineering Seminar: Leilani Gilpin

Description

The Department of Civil and Systems Engineering welcomes Leilani Gilpin, an assistant professor in computer science and engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz, for a talk titled "Explaining Errors in Autonomous Driving: A Diagnosis Tool and Testing Framework for Robust Decision Making."

Please attend the event by using the Zoom link.

Abstract:

Autonomous systems are prone to errors and failures without knowing why. In critical domains like driving, these autonomous counterparts must be able to recount their actions for safety, liability, and trust. An explanation: a model-dependent reason or justification for the decision of the autonomous agent being assessed, is a key component for post-mortem failure analysis, but also for pre-deployment verification. I will show a monitoring framework that uses a model and commonsense knowledge to detect and explain unreasonable vehicle scenarios, even if it has not seen that error before.

In the second part of the talk, I will motivate the explanations as a testing framework for autonomous systems. While it is important to develop realistic tests in simulation, simulation is not always representative of the corner cases in the real world. I will show how to use explanations in a feedback loop. The explanation ensures that the machine has done the right thing or it exploits a stressor to be modified and tested moving forward. I will conclude by discussing new challenges at the intersection of XAI and autonomy towards autonomous systems that are explainable by design.