The intelligent classroom: Competent assistance in the physical world

How can we make robotic systems that physically interact and cooperate with people in interesting ways? Such systems will be useful to people because they understand the tasks they are to be used for and can figure out to help out in them. I refer to such systems (both robotic and purely electronic) as competent assistants: systems that are able to aid a user in his work because they understand what that work is.; This dissertation describes a competent assistant that advances the state of the art for physical interaction: the Intelligent Classroom, a prototype automated lecture facility that serves as its own audio/visual assistant. The Classroom domain provides an interesting level of interaction and also exhibits many of the interesting challenges of mobile autonomous robotics research. Key contributions of this research include: (1) Techniques for connecting the low-level sensors and actuators to a plan-recognizing symbolic execution system. (2) Demonstrating how a good level of intentional cooperative interaction can be achieved without explicitly reasoning about goals. (3) A voice-operated slide-advancing system. Jabberwocky uses speech-recognition results to determine what slide a speaker wishes to discuss, allowing a speaker to dynamically change his presentation to suit the needs of his audience.