Human Behavior Learning and Transfer

Book excerpt: Bridging the gap between human-computer engineering and control engineering, Human Behavior Learning and Transfer delineates how to abstract human action and reaction skills into computational models. The authors include methods for modeling a variety of human action and reaction behaviors and explore processes for evaluating, optimizing, and transferring human skills. They also cover modeling continuous and discontinuous human control strategy and discuss simulation studies and practical real-life situations. The book examines how to model two main aspects of human behavior: reaction skills and action skills. It begins with a discussion of the various topics involved in human reaction skills modeling. The authors apply machine learning techniques and statistical analysis to abstracting models of human reaction control strategy. They contend that such models can be learned sufficiently to emulate complex human control behaviors in the feedback loop. The second half of the book explores issues related to human action skills modeling. The methods presented are based on techniques for reducing the dimensionality of data sets, while preserving as much useful information as possible. The modeling approaches developed are applied in real-life applications including navigation of smart wheel chairs and intelligent surveillance. Written in a consistent, easily approachable style, the book includes in-depth discussions of a broad range of topics. It provides the tools required to formalize human behaviors into algorithmic, machine-coded strategies.