Welcome to the HRI Cluster Workshop

1
Welcome to the HRICluster Workshop
What is the HRI Cross-Cutting Technical Area? And
how does it fit into The New IIS?
Ephraim P. Glinert, PhD CISE / IIS
Division National Science Foundation eglinert_at_nsf.
gov
September, 2006
2
CISE Directorate

• Peter A. Freeman, Assistant Director
• pfreeman_at_nsf.gov
• Currently organized into 3 divisions
• Division of Computing and Communication
  Foundations (CCF)
• Division of Computer and Network Systems (CNS)
• Division of Information and Intelligent Systems
  (IIS)

3
IIS Division

• C. Suzanne Iacono, Acting Division Director
  (FY06)
• siacono_at_nsf.gov
• Haym Hirsh, Division Director (FY07)
• hhirsh_at_nsf.gov
• Weve reorganized in conjunction with our new
  solicitation NSF 06-572 to consist primarily of 3
  clusters representing core technical areas
  instead of the many programs and old clusters we
  used to have
• Human Centered Computing (HCC)
• Information Integration and Informatics (III)
• Robust Intelligence (RI)

4
Human Centered Computing (HCC)
Subsumes the following old programs Digital
Society and Technologies Human-Computer
Interaction Universal Access Program
officers staffing the cluster Amy Baylor,
William S. Bainbridge, Ephraim P. Glinert,
Wayne Lutters, Mary Lou Maher
5
Information Integrationand Informatics (III)
Subsumes the following old programs Data
Management Systems Digital Government Digital
Libraries and Archives Information and
Knowledge Management Science and Engineering
Informatics Program officers staffing the
cluster Larry Brandt, Steve Griffin, Le
Gruenwald, Frank Olken, Sylvia Spengler, Maria
Zemankova
6
Robust Intelligence (RI)
Subsumes the following old programs Artificial
Intelligence and Cognitive Science
Computational Neuroscience Computer Vision
Human Language and Communication
Robotics Program officers staffing the cluster
Daniel DeMenthon, C.-S. George Lee, Tanya
Korelsky, Edwina Rissland, Kenneth C. Whang
7
Why Clusters?

• Larger pots of money that will allow us to make
  more big awards each year.
• The ability to allocate each year appropriate
  amounts (more or less, as the case may be)
  to areas according to the overall quality of the
  proposals received.
• Agility to pursue promising emerging research
  areas as they are detected, while still being
  able to fund existing areas at reasonable levels.
• A team of Program Directors to thrash out which
  proposals represent the most exciting new ideas
  and best potential value, rather than each
  PD having to agonize over this on his/her own.

8
How Does HRI Fit Into The Picture?

• We have identified two cross-cutting technical
  areas that appear at this time to be of growing
  interest to the research community and society.
• Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) is one of these.
  Information Privacy and Security (IPS) is the
  other.
• Research in a cross-cutting technical area will
  typically be highly relevant to more than one of
  our core clusters, so proposals submitted to them
  will be managed by small teams of PDs. For HRI,
  the current lead PDs are George Lee (RI) and
  Ephraim Glinert (HCC).
• We may add new cross-cutting technical areas
  from time to time, as science and technology
  evolve - and we may also delete those whose time
  has passed.

9
Whats Human-Centered?

• Human beings assume participatory and integral
  roles throughout all stages of IT development and
  use
• People design new technologies.
• People, in teams and organizations, at work, at
  school, at home and at play, use them.
• People anticipate and enjoy their benefits.
• People learn about the outcomes of use and
  translate that knowledge into the next generation
  of systems.
• New IT and human societies co-evolve,
  transforming each other in the process.
• The design of IT must be sensitive to human
  values and preferences.

10
Current HCC Topics of Interest Include...

• Problem-solving in distributed and mobile
  environments
• Multimedia and multi-modal interfaces used by
  people and machines to communicate.
• Intelligent interfaces and user modeling,
  information visualization, and adaptation of
  content for different display capabilities,
  modalities, bandwidth and latency.
• Multi-agent systems that control and coordinate
  actions and solve complex problems in distributed
  environments.
• Models for effective computer-mediated
  human-human interaction.
• Definition of semantic structures for multimedia
  information to support cross-modal input and
  output.
• Specific solutions to address the special needs
  of particular communities.
• Collaborative systems that enable
  knowledge-intensive and dynamic interactions for
  innovation and knowledge generation.
• Novel methods to support and enhance social
  interaction.
• Studies of how social organizations respond to
  and shape the introduction of new information
  technologies.