SEMINARIOS DE INVESTIGACIÓN EN INGENIERÍA INFORMÁTICA Y DE
TELECOMUNICACIÓN 2008-2009
Actividad de Formación Continua del Programa Oficial de Posgrado en Ingeniería
Informática y de Telecomunicación
Escuela Politécnica Superior, Universidad Autónoma de
Madrid
viernes, 21 de NOVIEMBRE de 2008, 10:00
Salón de Grados, Escuela Politécnica Superior,
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Inventing Virtual Humans that Teach and Conduct Therapy
Dr. Ronald Cole.
President, Boulder Language Technologies. University of Colorado. Boulder, CO
Abstract
This talk will describe and demonstrate computer programs that use lifelike computer
characters to teach children to read and administer speech therapy treatments
to help individuals with aphasia and Parkinson disease re-acquire speech and language
skills. I will briefly review theory and research that informs the design of computer
programs that use virtual humans, the technologies that enable natural spoken
dialogs between virtual humans and people and the unique challenges involved in
developing these programs.
PDF
presentation
Ronald Cole
Dr. Ronald Cole received a PhD in experimental psychology in 1971 he worked first at the University of Waterloo and then at Carnegie Mellon University in psychology departments studying speech perception. Between 1980 and1988 Ron worked as a project scientist in computer science at CMU under the direction of Raj Reddy developing large vocabulary continuous speech recognition systems. In 1988, he moved to the Oregon Graduate Institute where he established the Center for Spoken Language Understanding. In 1998, he moved to the University of Colorado Boulder where he established the Center for Spoken Language Research with Dr. Wayne Ward. Ron has published approximately 60 articles in peer-review journals and 150 papers in archived conference proceedings. He is the recipient of over $40 million in individual investigator awards from the NSF, NIH and IES. For the past 15 years he has led research projects that aim to create a new generation of learning tools that feature conversational interaction with virtual teachers and therapists. His work using a virtual tutor to facilitate vocabulary learning by children with profound hearing loss at an oral deaf school was featured on ABC TV’s Prime Time and the U.S. National Science Foundation’s home page. In 2007, after 27 years as an academic, Ron left the University of Colorado to work at two companies he founded with Dr. Ward, with the goal of developing accessible and affordable tutoring and therapy programs for use by the general public. Ron is currently chief scientist at Mentor Interactive, a company that develops reading programs for children and speech and language therapy programs for individuals with aphasia, and president of Boulder Language Technologies, a company that develops science tutors for elementary school children.