Another interesting free webinar related to user models:<div><br clear="all"><div><a href="https://csail.adobeconnect.com/_a999979575/e1t9ejv3brf/event/registration.html" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(17,85,204);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">https://csail.adobeconnect.com/_a999979575/e1t9ejv3brf/event/registration.html</a><span style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> </span><br style="color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:20pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif">IAP Virtual Meeting</span></b><span style="font-size:24pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif;color:rgb(204,102,0)">MIT</span></b><span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif;color:rgb(102,102,102)"> COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LABORATORY</span><span style="font-family:Verdana,sans-serif;color:rgb(102,102,102)"></span></p>
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<tbody><tr><td style="margin:0px;font-family:arial,sans-serif;padding:3.75pt"><p style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt"><b><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif;color:rgb(204,102,0)">SHARING MENTAL MODELS WITH MACHINES </span></b><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif;color:rgb(204,102,0)"></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt"><b><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif;color:rgb(204,102,0)">     </span></b><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif;color:rgb(204,102,0)"></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt"><b><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif">Date: Tuesday, September 25, 2012</span></b><span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"></span></p><p style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt">
<strong><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif">Time: 12:30-1:30pm EDT</span></strong><span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"></span></p><p style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt"><strong><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif">CSAIL PI: Professor Seth Teller  </span></strong><span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt"><strong><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> </span></strong><span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p><table border="0" cellpadding="0" width="483" style="width:362.25pt">
<tbody><tr><td style="margin:0px;font-family:arial,sans-serif;padding:0.75pt"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif">Robots have permeated every aspect of our lives. They play a role in manufacturing, medicine, military operations, bomb defusing and disposal, space exploration, deep ocean activities, inside nuclear operations, and in disaster relief. As robots become even more embedded into our lives, CSAIL researcher Seth Teller is working to answer the question:</span><strong><i><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"></span></i></strong><strong><i><span style="font-size:11pt"></span></i></strong></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family:Verdana,sans-serif">How can we build robots to work effectively alongside people in ordinary environments without any special preparation?</span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<strong><i><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> </span></i></strong><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif">A key aspect of Professor Teller's approach has been the development of interactive methods with which people can convey, to robots, their knowledge of the world and how it works. This process is called "sharing mental models," and it is organized around "affordances" in the world.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"><br>An affordance is any latent possibility for action in the robot's surroundings: a path (to walk), a doorknob (to turn), a button (to push), a gauge (to read), etc. Using speech, gestures, and other interface methods, the human indicates affordances, and the robot reflects its interpretation, until the human is sufficiently confident to grant the robot permission to proceed autonomously with the task at hand.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif">This factoring of the overall task into a part for the human and a part for the robot is an example of so-called sliding or variable autonomy, as it, in principle, enables coupled adjustment of either party's workload. Professor Teller will sketch applications of the proposed mechanism to several task domains, including:</span></p>
<ul type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:15px"><strong><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif">voice-commandable</span></strong><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> semi-autonomous pallet handling</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:15px"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif">explosive <strong>ordnance disposal</strong></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:15px"><strong><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif">disaster relief</span></strong><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> (e.g., at the Fukushima nuclear plant) as part of the recently-announced DARPA Robotic Challenge</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:15px"><strong><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif">assistive technology </span></strong><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif">for blind and low vision individuals and individuals living with paralysis</span></li>
</ul></td></tr><tr><td style="margin:0px;font-family:arial,sans-serif;padding:0.75pt"></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt"><br></p><p style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> </span></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt"><strong><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif">Speaker:</span></strong><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"></span></p><p style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt">
<span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> </span></p><p style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"><a href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001Jotpmwk4kltljBnOSaHlkj78Yk90QNB3rmoZ48xALEIaAAnt2xXU8-IcE4FLr75TBBWn9TepgVAaWiyBjdSeHBz2cDC-Jbn1Rt7ERQ_lGdPhPJn3AYd8991vrt6_cU1M" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)"><b><span style="color:rgb(191,83,0)">Seth Teller</span></b></a>, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering.  </span><span style="font-size:8pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"></span></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif">After a PhD in Computer Science at Berkeley, and postdoctoral stints at Hebrew University and Princeton, Seth Teller joined MIT's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department Department (EECS), and its Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), in 1994. There, his group develops machines that work closely alongside people in health-care, military, civilian, and disaster-relief settings. His recent projects include: wearable devices that provide task-salient information about nearby terrain, objects, text and people; a self-driving car; an unmanned semi-autonomous forklift; a voice-commandable robotic wheelchair; and a humanoid robot that performs dangerous tasks while people help from a distance.    </span></p>
</td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></div></div>-- <br>Saiph Savage<br><br><br><br>
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