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

CISE Directorate Peter A. Freeman, Assistant Director 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)

IIS Division C. Suzanne Iacono, Acting Division Director (FY’06) Haym Hirsh, Division Director (FY’07) We’ve reorganized in conjunction with our new solicitation NSF 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)

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

Information Integration and 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

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

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.

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.

What’s 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.

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.