Prof. desJardins receives NSF grant to study teaching computers to follow verbal instructions

Professor Marie desJardins receied a three year grant from NSF's Robust Intelligence program to develop techniques that will permit a computer or robot to learn from examples to carry out multipart tasks specified in natural language on behalf of a user. The project, Teaching Computers to Follow Verbal Instructions, is part of a collaborative effort with Rutgers University.

The goal of the work is develop technology for an improved ability for human users to interact with intelligent agents, the incorporation of novel AI research insights and activities into education and outreach activities, and the development of resources for the AI educator community. In addition to permitting intelligent agents to be developed and trained in the future for a broad range of complex application domains, the interactive agents that we will develop will be used for outreach and student learning.