Integrating Imitation Learning with Human Driving Data into Reinforcement Learning to Improve Training Efficiency for Autonomous Driving

Two current methods used to train autonomous cars are reinforcement learning and imitation learning. This research develops a new learning methodology and systematic approach in both a simulated and a smaller real world environment by integrating supervised imitation learning into reinforcement learning to make the RL training data collection process more effective and efficient. By combining the two methods, the proposed research successfully leverages the advantages of both RL and IL methods. First, a real mini-scale robot car was assembled and trained on a 6 feet by 9 feet real world track using imitation learning. During the process, a handle controller was used to control the mini-scale robot car to drive on the track by imitating a human expert driver and manually recorded the actions using Microsoft AirSim's API. 331 accurate human-like reward training samples were able to be generated and collected. Then, an agent was trained in the Microsoft AirSim simulator using reinforcement learning for 6 hours with the initial 331 reward data inputted from imitation learning training. After a 6-hour training period, the mini-scale robot car was able to successfully drive full laps around the 6 feet by 9 feet track autonomously while the mini-scale robot car was unable to complete one full lap round the track even after 30 hour training pure RL training. With 80% less training time, the new methodology produced significantly more average rewards per hour. Thus, the new methodology was able to save a significant amount of training time and can be used to accelerate the adoption of RL in autonomous driving, which would help produce more efficient and better results in the long run when applied to real life scenarios. Key Words: Reinforcement Learning (RL), Imitation Learning (IL), Autonomous Driving, Human Driving Data, CNN