NSF Human-Machine Interaction & Information Access Budget Code:  
The focus of research in the area of human-machine interaction and information access is to advance the underlying scientific knowledge and technologies for creating and inserting an intelligent service layer that will significantly broaden the base of information providers, developers, and consumers, while reducing the existing barriers to accessing and using information and computing resources for real world applications.

Work supported in this area includes:
  • Human Language Technology--development of technologies for speech recognition, text understanding, multi-lingual language processing, including machine aided language translation;
  • Multi-modal Human-computer interfaces--image processing and computer vision, integrated with sound, text, and gesture recognition;
  • Very Large Knowledge Repositories--technologies for storing, accessing, and using large amounts and different varieties of data and information;
  • Virtual Environments/Collaboration Technology--sharable computing and communications environments which many can access, interact with, and use effectively across time/geographical and physical/artificial boundaries.
Budget ($ M)
FY 95 Act 20.14
FY 96 Pres 14.55
FY 96 Est 15.69
FY 97 Rqst  
Program Component Areas
  FY 96 FY 97
HECC    
LSN 5.29  
HCS    
HuCS 6.80  
ETHR 3.60  
Agency Ties
DARPA Partner
NSF  
DOE  
NASA  
NIH  
NSA  
NIST  
NOAA  
EPA  
ED  
AHCPR  
VA  
Milestone Changes  
FY 1995 Actual Milestones FY 1996 Estimated Milestones FY 1997 Agency Requested Milestones
Demonstrated a prototype system capable of collecting, compiling and delivering information in mixed media and modalities: sound, speech, texts, images,graphics.

Initiated a new research thrust in Virtual Environments with the aim of shifting the software development paradigm to a more distributed, user-centered, and domain-oriented focus.

Developed new and extended thrusts and directions for the Science and Technology center on Cognitive Science at U. Penn to provide sharable resources in human language technology over the NREN to the larger research community and the industry.

Initiated new research efforts to explore ways to provide better, intelligent interfaces for access of computing and communication devices by the disabled. 		Initiate new and extend ongoing research in user-centered design,including models, interfaces, and programming tools for rapid prototyping.

Demonstrate results of research in coordination theory, collaboration technology, and group-oriented software tools.

Initiate new and extend ongoing research in novel modalities of human-computer communications (e.g., face and gesture recognition and sensor-motor control), modeling and simulation, virtual reality, and problem-solving environments.

Accelerate development of techniques to capture, store, access, refine, search distribute,preserve, and interactively use complex information over high capacity communication channel sin very large knowledge repositories. 		This activity is now incorporated into the activity described under Human-centered Systems.