MIT’s Julie Shah presents “Enhancing Human Capability with Intelligent Machine Teammates” as part of the IRIM Robotics Seminar Series. The event will be held in the Marcus Nanotechnology Building, Rooms 1116-1118, from 12-1 p.m. and is open to the public.

Abstract

Every team has top performers — people who excel at working in a team to find the right solutions in complex, difficult situations. These top performers include nurses who run hospital floors, emergency response teams, air traffic controllers, and factory line supervisors. While they may outperform the most sophisticated optimization and scheduling algorithms, they cannot often tell us how they do it. Similarly, even when a machine can do the job better than most of us, it can’t explain how. In this talk I share recent work investigating effective ways to blend the unique decision-making strengths of humans and machines. I discuss the development of computational models that enable machines to efficiently infer the mental state of human teammates and thereby collaborate with people in richer, more flexible ways. Our studies demonstrate statistically significant improvements in people’s performance on military, healthcare, and manufacturing tasks when aided by intelligent machine teammates. 

Bio

Julie Shah is an associate professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and leads the Interactive Robotics Group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In 2014, she received the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, and MIT Technology Review included her on its list of 35 Innovators Under 35.

Shah’s work with industrial human-robot collaboration was also included on Technology Review’s 2013 list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies. She has received international recognition in the form of best-paper awards and nominations from the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling, and the International Symposium on Robotics. Shah earned degrees in aeronautics and astronautics and in autonomous systems from MIT.