Rob St. Amant
		Physical address: Room 2268 Engineering Building II Centennial Campus North Carolina State University Phone: (919) 515-7938 Fax: (919) 515-7896 email: stamant@csc.ncsu.edu	USPS address: Department of Computer Science NC State University Campus Box 8206 Raleigh, NC 27695-8206	FedEx/UPS address: Department of Computer Science NC State University 890 Oval Drive 3320 Engineering Building II Raleigh, NC 27606

About me

News and status updates (January, 2012)

• Course page for CSC411: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Spring, 2012.

• Course page for CSC454: Human-Computer Interaction, Spring, 2012.

• Conference paper and poster acceptances:

  • Miller, S. A., Smith, A., Bahram, S., and St. Amant, R., to appear. A glove for rubbing and tapping gestures (short paper). International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI), Lisbon, Portugal.

  • Chakraborty, A., Hong, K.W., Kakkaradi, S., Zhao, Y.-L., and St. Amant, R., to appear. Pointing at responsive objects outdoors (poster). International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI), Lisbon, Portugal.

  • Bahram, S., Chakraborty, A., and St. Amant, R., to appear. CAVIAR: A vibrotactile device for accessible reaching (poster). International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI), Lisbon, Portugal.

  • Bahram, S., Ravindran, S. and St. Amant, R., to appear. Crowdsourcing the Web accessibility problem. Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference (CSUN), San Diego, CA.

• I've finished the final draft of my book manuscript. The working title is Computing for Ordinary Mortals:

  Computing isn't only (or even mostly) about hardware and software; it's about the ideas behind the technology. This book introduces basic computing concepts and strategies in a way that readers without a technical background can understand and appreciate. Each of the chapters illustrates ideas from a different area of computing, and together they provide important insights into what drives the field as a whole.

Projects

Research in my lab can be summarized as targeting models of interaction, drawing on concepts in artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, and cognitive science. (Our results have appeared in HCI, AI, and even animal behavior publications.) Some of the pictures below are linked to videos.

Embodied interaction

Why is solving problems on a computer often harder than in the physical world? We are interested in the nature of the interface between agents (people, robots, and software agents) and their environments (real or virtual). We have developed wearable input devices, a robot that can choose simple tools for different jobs, and various drawing applications. Students: Sina Bahram, Arpan Chakraborty, Shea McIntee, Sam Miller, Andy Smith. (Recent graduates: Thomas Horton, Lloyd Williams.)

     

Accessibility

How can we overcome barriers to usability for people with vision impairment? We have recently begun to explore the area of accessible user interfaces. Work in the lab has concentrated on problems in two areas: automatically evaluating the accessibility of Web sites, and wearable computing devices (the last effort is funded by Google Research). Students: Sina Bahram, Arpan Chakraborty.

  .

Intelligent user interfaces and modeling for HCI

Could computers do a better job of assisting users? Would it help if we had a better understanding of users' abilities? These are core issues in HCI. We use task and cognitive modeling techniques, such as GOMS and ACT-R, to build engineering models of real users; we also build and model intelligent user interfaces. Students: Pat Cash, KyungWha Hong, Shishir Kakaraddi, Debadeep Sen. (Recent graduates: Marivic Bonto-Kane, Reuben Cornel, Yanglei Zhao.)

   

Research results

• Papers

• Software: I maintain a set of AI planning systems written in Common Lisp intended for classroom use. (People may find the AI Planning Resources page useful too.) Two older systems may be of historical interest: G2A translates high-level procedural GOMSL models into detailed cognitive ACT-R 4 models. SegMan is a perceptual substrate that uses simple image processing techniques to "see" the Microsoft Windows graphical user interface.

• Essays on interaction design (non-technical)

Students

For new students

If you'd like to work with me, read through these papers to find related research areas I'm interested in.

• Bahram, S., Sen, D., and St. Amant, R. (2011). Prediction of Web page accessibility based on structural and textual features. W4A, Article 31.
• Cornel, R., St. Amant, R., and Shrager, J. (2010). Collaboration and modeling in CogLaborate. BRIMS Conference, Paper #28.
• St. Amant, R., Horton, T. E., and Ritter, F. E. (2007). Model-based evaluation of expert cell phone menu interaction. ACM TOCHI 14(1): 1-24.

Current students

• Sina Bahram, Ph.D. in progress. Area: Accessibility and intelligent user interfaces.
• Pat Cash, Ph.D. in progress. Area: Context-based intelligent user interfaces.
• Arpan Chakraborty, Ph.D. in progress. Area: Cognitive vision and accessibility.
• Jim Creager, B.S. in progress. Area: Multi-touch and gesture-based interaction.
• KyungWha Hong, Ph.D. in progress. Area: Model-based user interface generation.
• Shishir Kakaraddi, M.S. in progress. Area: Intelligent user interfaces.
• Shea McIntee, Ph.D. in progress. Area: Gesture-based interaction and modeling.
• Debadeep Sen, Ph.D. in progress. Area: Intelligent user interfaces.

Past students

• Yanglei Zhao, M.S., 2011. Gibbon: A wearable device for pointing gesture recognition. (Now at TransLoc.)
• Thomas Horton, Ph.D., 2011. A partial contour similarity-based approach to visual affordances in habile agents.
• Marivic Bonto-Kane, Ph.D., 2010. Statistical modeling of human response times for task modeling in HCI. (Now at the Naval Medical Information Management Center.)
• Reuben Cornel, M.S., 2009. Coglaborate -- An environment for collaborative cognitive modeling. (Now at Salesforce.)
• Lloyd Williams, Ph.D., 2009. Dynamic ontology driven learning and control of robotic tool using behavior.
• Wei Mu, Ph.D., 2009. A schematic representation for cognitive tool-using agents. (Now at Microsoft.)
• Lucas Layman. Ph.D., 2008 (co-chair with Laurie Williams). Information needs of developers for program comprehension during software maintenance tasks. (Now at the Fraunhofer Center for Experimental Software Engineering, University of Maryland.)
• James Ward, M.S., 2008. A comparison of fuzzy logic spatial relationship methods for human robot interaction. (Now at U.S. Army Research Office.)
• Chaya Narayanan Kutty, M.S., 2008. Toward video games on video. (Now at Cisco Systems.)
• Kevin Damm, M.S., 2008. Incorporating student note-taking into online intelligent computer-assisted instruction. (Now at Google.)
• Andrea Dawkins, M.S., 2007. Personalized hierarchical menu organization for mobile device users. (Now at Entrinsik.)
• Kenya Freeman, Ph.D., 2006 (Psychology, co-chair with Eric Wiebe). The effects of automated decision aid reliability and algorithm modality on reported trust and task performance. (Now at LexisNexis Group.)
• Curtis Boyce, M.S., 2006. Video-based augmented reality for robot navigation. (Now at GlaxoSmithKline.)
• Sean P. McBride, M.S., 2005. Data organization and abstraction for distributed intrusion detection. (Now at the Washington Post Company.)
• Alexander Wood, M.S., 2005. Effective tool use in a habile agent. (Now at Grayhawk Systems.)
• Lloyd Williams, M.S., 2005. Opening the Black Box on Statistical Modeling, The Theory Behind VisualBayes.
• Thomas Horton, M.S., 2004. HabilisDraw: a tool-based direct manipulation software environment.
• Bradley Siegler, M.S., 2004. Supporting electronic CRC card sessions with natural interaction.
• Colin G. Butler, M.S., 2004. Exploring bimanual tool-based interaction in a drawing environment.
• Nihar Namjoshi, M.S., 2004. Web information retrieval using Web document structures. (Now at Microsoft.)
• Martin Dulberg, Ph.D., 2003. A task-based evaluation framework for comparing input devices. (Now at DELTA, North Carolina State University.)
• Ajay Dudani, M.S., 2003. User interface softbots. (Now at Qualcomm Innovation Center.)
• Kunal Shah, M.S., 2003. Image processing for cognitive models in dynamic gaming environments.
• Sameer Rajyaguru, M.S., 2003. Image processing substrate to assist cognitive models interact with dynamic environments. (Now at Amazon.)
• Mark O. Riedl, M.S., 2001. A computational model of navigation in social environments. (Now in in the College of Computing, Georgia Tech.)
• Troy Tolle, M.S., 2000. IDIOM: An intelligent, dynamically manipulable simulation for high school physics Education. (Now at Digital Chalk.)
• T. Edward Long, M.S., 1999. A navigation testbed.

Awards

• Best Paper (with Reuben Cornel and Jeff Shrager), 19th Behavior Representation in Modeling & Simulation (BRIMS) Conference, Charleston, SC, 2010.
• Best Paper (with Lucas Layman and Laurie Williams), First International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM), Madrid, Spain, 2007.
• Best Applied Paper (with Frank Ritter, Penn State University), Sixth International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (ICCM), Pittsburgh, August, 2004.
• Outstanding new teacher, Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University, 1999.
• Recognition of special service, Office of the Army (Heeresamt), Cologne, Germany, 1991.