LAUSR

Connectionist artificial intelligence (AI) can power many critical tasks for connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs). However, connectionist AI lacks interpretability and usually needs large amount of data for learning. A Markov logic network (MLN), which combines first-order logic (FOL) with statistical learning, learns weighted FOL formulas for inference. MLNs can incorporate domain expert knowledge in the form of FOL formulas to achieve data-efficient learning and transparent decision process. In this paper, we propose a hybrid driving decision-making system, which integrates a MLN module and a deep Q-network (DQN) for enhanced driving safety. The MLN module evaluates the safety of ranked actions from DQN to reduce potential collisions. A collective MLN (Co-MLN) learning algorithm is proposed and it enables CAVs collectively learn a global MLN model for safe state transitions, given distributed small amount of noisy data. A hybrid DQN-MLN learning algorithm is also developed for CAVs to collectively learn to drive in new driving environments. Simulations performed using a highway driving simulator show that the proposed Co-MLN algorithm is highly data-efficient and the learned hybrid driving system can effectively reduce collisions. In addition, the learned MLN module provides transparency for safety-critical driving decisions.