Agentic Driving Coach: Robustness and Determinism of Agentic AI-Powered Human-in-the-Loop Cyber-Physical Systems

arXiv cs.RO / 4/14/2026

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Key Points

  • The paper argues that using foundation-model-based AI agents (including LLMs) in human-in-the-loop cyber-physical systems (HITL CPS) creates hard-to-control nondeterminism due to variability from humans, agents, and changing environments.
  • It proposes a reactor-model-of-computation (MoC) approach, implemented with the open-source Lingua Franca (LF) framework, to move toward more robust and deterministic agentic HITL CPS behavior.
  • The authors run a case study for an “agentic driving coach,” evaluating how the LF-based design behaves when coupled with human interaction in a driving-like CPS setting.
  • The evaluation highlights practical obstacles to restoring determinism in agentic HITL CPS and outlines possible pathways to address these issues.

Abstract

Foundation models, including large language models (LLMs), are increasingly used for human-in-the-loop (HITL) cyber-physical systems (CPS) because foundation model-based AI agents can potentially interact with both the physical environments and human users. However, the unpredictable behavior of human users and AI agents, in addition to the dynamically changing physical environments, leads to uncontrollable nondeterminism. To address this urgent challenge of enabling agentic AI-powered HITL CPS, we propose a reactor-model-of-computation (MoC)-based approach, realized by the open-source Lingua Franca (LF) framework. We also carry out a concrete case study using the agentic driving coach as an application of HITL CPS. By evaluating the LF-based agentic HITL CPS, we identify practical challenges in reintroducing determinism into such agentic HITL CPS and present pathways to address them.