Colloquium Johan Everts

In order to improve human-machine interaction, both human and machine need a model
which describes (to a certain degree) the state, workings and intentions of the
other. Information has to be exchanged in order to keep their models up to date.
When for example a computer is busy calculating a request, an hour glass informs the
user that the machine is busy and has not crashed. However humans are less
transparent for the machine, when it presents an operator with urgent information it
has limited ways of knowing whether the operator is busy thinking or has gone away
to fetch coffee. In this research an eye tracker is used to widen the information
channel from human to machine. Through the eye tracker the machine knows at what the
operator is looking and consequently it can estimate what the operator is doing and
is interested in. A multi-agent system was built that could support improved
human-machine interaction through the use of eye tracking. Agent technologies were
used since the computation and data sources were distributed and because flexibility was
needed both in the development and final phase.