The current study for ONR examines how to effectively prepare enlisted sailors to quickly pick up, maintain and operate new autonomous platforms. A first cohort of sailors, in addition to local civilian high school graduates and community college students, recently completed the initial CMRA pilot training program held at the National Robotics Engineering Center. 

“We are integrating more and more autonomous and semi-autonomous systems across the Navy and with the speed of emerging technologies, we need sailors capable of teaming with an evolving variety of systems, adapting and learning novel systems and features quickly, safely and effectively. The effective integration of machines within human teams is critical to maintaining maritime superiority, providing humanitarian aid and deterring our adversaries,” said Lt. Cmdr. Michael Natali, program officer at ONR. “With CMRA, we are working to create a trainable, foundational skill set that is platform agnostic versus traditional methods of training to a particular system. Our initial results from the first cohort are very promising.”

The six week program was built on two existing CMU robotics technician curricula: CMRA’s SMART Robotics Technician Training — typically used to upskill or reskill manufacturing workers — and AI User, a machine learning and artificial intelligence course for nondevelopers by the Technology for Effective and Efficient Learning (TEEL) lab’s Social and Interactive Learning at Community Colleges program. From this foundation, the CMRA and TEEL teams developed new content around the U.S. Navy use case and the needs for its emerging robotics community.

The pilot program culminated in a robotics competition event, which focused on the capacity for students to learn new, unknown systems quickly and put the students up against five highly proficient Marines. “This simultaneously produced comparison data — and motivation for the competitors,” Higashi said. 

That data is now being analyzed and will inform the training of a second cohort in January, but the researchers already know they gained new insights into the experimental curriculum and how students responded to it. 

“In some cases, students picked up the material faster than we expected, which might allow us to streamline the program,” said Higashi. “The shorter and faster we can get the program without sacrificing learning, the better. We want the most learning in the smallest footprint.”