Advanced Man-Machine Interaction - Fundamentals and Implementation

Citation

Hu, H. (2007), "Advanced Man-Machine Interaction - Fundamentals and Implementation", Industrial Robot, Vol. 34 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2007.04934fae.001

Advanced Man-Machine Interaction - Fundamentals and Implementation

Karl-Friedrich KraissSpringerApril 2006www.springer.com/uk/home/engineering?SGWID=3-175-22-112579645- 0 ISBN: 78-3-540-30618-4£100

This book clearly presents a wide range of topics covered in this multidisciplinary field, i.e. from advanced man-machine interface concept to its design and implementation. It comprises eight chapters and two appendixes, accompanied by a CD-ROM containing software development environments for image processing, classification and virtual environment implementation, as well as a test data base for gestures, facial expressions and human tracking.

The book starts with a brief introduction to application areas of man-machine interaction, and then to briefly summarise the scope of the book. From Chapter 2 to 4, the book is mainly focused on the fundamental issues on the realisation of multimodal man-machine interaction via hand/ head/body gestures, sign languages, facial expressions, and voice. Chapter 5 deals with the problems associated with video-based person recognition and tracking. Chapter 6 addresses how to interact with virtual objects in virtual environments, including visual, acoustic and haptic virtual worlds. In Chapter 7, the assistant role of service robots in the future society is described, and several different aspects of interactive and cooperative robot assistants are introduced. It is clear that learning by imitation or learning by demonstration is a key ability for service robots to be useful in our society and accepted by every citizen. Finally, the concept of user assisted man-machine interaction is presented in Chapter 8, including assistance in manual control and man-machine dialogs.

Overall, this is a well written and superbly presented book. It includes numerous pictures, images, figures and descriptions of existing systems. It is a useful handbook for researchers and developers of man-machine interface and a potential textbook for graduate- level university students who study degree courses in intelligent systems and human-centred robotics.

Huosheng HuDepartment of Computer Science, University of Essex, UK