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The need to train new workers effectively and upskill the existing workforce is a challenge faced by almost every industry across the globe. The healthcare industry, in particular, is confronting a crisis. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects a shortage of 10 million healthcare workers by 2030. However, according to the Future of Jobs Report by the World Economic Forum, only half of the workers have access to training and learning opportunities. To sustain a resilient workforce and to protect the health of the world’s population, my thesis looks at using AI and robots to accelerate human learners’ acquisition of workforce skills. Specifically, I develop novel Explainable AI (XAI) algorithms to automate training to enable workers to collaborate with autonomous robots - a trend that is fast-growing. I also use statistical models to model human learner cognitive processes to create Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) systems to generate effective instructions tailored to individual learners. In addition to driving technical advances, my research is having a positive societal impact. I collaborate with Houston Methodist Hospital to create a first-of-its-kind robotic tutor for clinical nursing education to reduce healthcare-associated infections. 

The central line dressing change is a life-critical procedure performed by nurses to provide patients with rapid infusion of fluids, such as blood and medications. Due to their complexity and the heavy workloads nurses face, dressing changes are prone to preventable errors that can result in central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs), leading to serious health complications or, in the worst cases, patient death. In the post-COVID-19 era, CLABSI rates have increased, partly due to the heightened nursing workload caused by shortages of both registered nurses and nurse educators. To address this challenge, healthcare facilities are seeking innovative nurse training solutions to complement expert nurse educators. In response, we present the design, development and evaluation of a robotic tutoring system, ASTRID: the Automated Sterile Technique Review and Instruction Device. ASTRID, which is the outcome of a two-year participatory design process, is designed to aid in the training of nursing skills essential for CLABSI prevention. First, we describe insights gained from interviews with nurse educators and nurses, which revealed the gaps of current training methods and requirements for new training tools. Based on these findings, we outline the development of our robotic tutor, which interacts with nursing students, providing real-time interventions and summary feedback to support skill acquisition. Finally, we present evaluations of the system's performance and perceived usefulness, conducted in a simulated clinical setting with nurse participants. These evaluations demonstrate the potential of our robotic tutor in nursing education. Our work highlights the importance of participatory design for robotics systems, and motivates new avenues for foundational research in robotics. 

AI-enabled agents designed to assist humans are gaining traction in a variety of domains such as healthcare and disaster response. It is evident that, as we move forward, these agents will play increasingly vital roles in our lives. To realize this future successfully and mitigate its unintended consequences, it is imperative that humans have a clear understanding of the agents that they work with. Policy summarization methods help facilitate this understanding by showcasing key examples of agent behaviors to their human users. Yet, existing methods produce “one-size-fits-all” summaries for a generic audience ahead of time. Drawing inspiration from research in pedagogy, we posit that personalized policy summaries can more effectively enhance user understanding. To evaluate this hypothesis, this paper presents and benchmarks a novel technique: Personalized Policy Summarization (PPS). PPS discerns a user’s mental model of the agent through a series of algorithmically generated questions and crafts customized policy summaries to enhance user understanding. Unlike existing methods, PPS actively engages with users to gauge their comprehension of the agent behavior, subsequently generating tailored explanations on the fly. Through a combination of numerical and human subject experiments, we confirm the utility of this personalized approach to explainable AI. 

Policy summarization is a computational paradigm for explaining the behavior and decision-making processes of autonomous robots to humans. It summarizes robot policies via exemplary demonstrations, aiming to improve human understanding of robotic behaviors. This understanding is crucial, especially since users often make critical decisions about robot deployment in the real world. Previous research in policy summarization has predominantly focused on simulated robots and environments, overlooking its application to physically embodied robots. Our work fills this gap by combining current policy summarization methods with a novel, interactive user interface that involves physical interaction with robots. We conduct human-subject experiments to assess our explanation system, focusing on the impact of different explanation modalities in policy summarization. Our findings underscore the unique advantages of combining virtual and physical training environments to effectively communicate robot behavior to human users. 

An ongoing nurse labor shortage has the potential to impact patient care well-being in the entire healthcare system. Moreover, more complex and sophisticated nursing care is required today for patients in hospitals forcing hospital-based nurses to carry out frequent training and assessment procedures, both to onboard new nurses and to validate skills of existing staff that guarantees best practices and safety. In this paper, we recognize an opportunity for the development and integration of intelligent robot tutoring technology into nursing education to tackle the growing challenges of nurse deficit. To this end, we identify specific research problems in the area of human-robot interaction that will need to be addressed to enable robot tutors for nurse training.