Perceptive Assistive Agents in Team Spaces (PAATS)

Problem

The use of next generation interface technologies to facilitate human-human collaboration and human-computer interaction has tremendous potential for enhancing team interaction. However, new devices and technologies cannot be inserted successfully unless they are adapted to the dynamics of the group's structure and interactions. Furthermore, the insertion of any particular technology may have unanticipated and unintended consequences. We have designed an Experimental Team Room (ETR) that is a replica of MITRE's standard conferencing environment. However, this facility has been modified to observe and record user interactions with room devices and research products.

Activities

We are leveraging the ETR to develop a sensor-based environment and a virtual human (Emma) that can access, monitor and change the physical environment. Users can communicate with Emma, the Electronic MITRE Meeting Assistant, in a variety of ways such as speech, gesture or via a graphical interface. We are endowing Emma with the ability to recognize individuals via speech and face recognition as well as the ability to track their location in space. We believe that a perceptive agent that is more aware of the physical context of a meeting will be more flexible and responsive to user needs than current meeting room interfaces.

Impact

By leveraging our own operational mission and corporate expertise, we have a tremendous opportunity to study real user populations over an extended period of time in such a way to inform usability issues critical to related C3I environments and to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.

For more information, please contact Lisa Harper (Principal Investigator), Abigail Gertner (Dialogue Manager), Paul Herceg (System Integrator; Speech), Tom Hines (Human Simulation), Ed Kemon (Wireless and Geolocation), Dave Mireles (Biometrics and Context Broker), Nick Orlans (Biometrics), Mike Shadid (Geolocation), or James Van Guilder (Distributed Systems Engineer) using the employee directory.

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