Embodying the JACK Agent Architecture
Emma Norling
University of Melbourne
Friday, 31st August 2001
0930 - 1100
SEECS lecture theatre 2
University of Melbourne Computer Science Department
SEECS Building
221 Bouverie Street, Carlton.
Abstract:
Agent-based models of human operators rarely include explicit representations
of the timing and accuracy of perception and action, although their accuracy
is sometimes implicitly modelled by including random noise for observations
and actions. In many situations though, the timing and accuracy of the person's
perception and action significantly influence their overall performance on a
task. Recently many cognitive architectures have been extended to include
perceptual/motor capabilities, making them embodied, and they have since been
successfully used to test and compare interface designs. This presentation
describes the implementation of a similar perceptual/motor system that uses
and extends the JACK agent language. The resulting embodied architecture has
been used to compare GUIs representing telephones, but has been designed to
interact with any mouse-driven Java interface. The results clearly indicate
the impact of poor design on performance, with the agent taking longer to
perform the task on the more poorly designed telephone.
Biosketch:
Emma Norling is a PhD student at the University of Melbourne. She is
looking at using agents to model human operators in software simulations,
and what aspects of human performance are important to include in the
agent models in order to achieve realistic simulations. She recently
spent three months studying at Pennsylvania State University with
Frank Ritter, a researcher in Cognitive Science. During this time she
was looking at implementing models of perception and action using the
JACK agent language.