TUMA: Towards an intelligent tutoring system for manual-procedural activities

Abstract

Many activities, such as learning a craft, involve learning how to manipulate physical objects by following a step-by-step procedure. In this paper we present our ongoing work on development of TUMA: an intelligent tutoring system for manual-procedural activities. We first introduce the notion of manual-procedural activity and then argue about the opportunities for creating intelligent tutors for manual-procedural activities. Such an intelligent tutoring system can be used in domains like teaching crafts, that involve acquiring cognitive knowledge along with specific motor skills. TUMA unifies the research from three different communities: intelligent tutoring systems, human motion tracking, and assistance systems for manual assembly in manufacturing. We describe the vision and the requirements of TUMA and its functional architecture inspired by high-level components of intelligent tutoring systems. Finally we report on our research road map for implementing a proof-of-concept and evaluating its impact.