Cooperating with people: the Intelligent Classroom

People frequently complain that it is too difficult to figure out how to get computers to do what they want. However, with a computer system that actually tries to understand what its users are doing, people can interact in ways that are more natural to them. We have been developing a system, the Intelligent Classroom, that does exactly this. The Intelligent Classroom uses cameras and microphones to sense a speaker's actions and then infers his intentions from those actions. Finally, it uses these intentions to decide what to do to best cooperate with the speaker. In the Intelligent Classroom, the speaker need not worry about how to operate the Classroom; he may simply go about his lecture and trust the Classroom to assist him at the appropriate moments.