Intelligent Multimedia Interfaces

This collection of original contributions reports on key advances in intelligent (knowledge-based) user interfaces that exploit multiple media -- text, graphics, maps -- and multiple modalities -- visual, auditory, gestural -- to facilitate human-computer interaction. Chapters are grouped into three sections that address automated presentation design, intelligent multimedia interfaces, and architectural and theoretical issues.

Although humans have a natural facility for managing and exploiting multiple input and output media, computers do not. Consequently, providing machines with the ability to interpret multimedia input and generate multimedia output would be a valuable facility for a number of key applications such as information retrieval and analysis, training and decision support. Successful intelligent multimedia interfaces require theories and technologies from a host of disciplines, including computational linguistics, computer graphics, cognitive science, human computer interaction, and computer-supported cooperative work -- all of them represented in this collection.

Mark T. Maybury is Director of the Bedford Artificial Intelligence Center and Director of the Advanced Information Systems Center at The MITRE Corporation.