October Meeting Held at IHMC

MRMA Tours IHMC

 October 2011

 On October 13^th 2011 our monthly meeting was held at IHMC in beautiful downtown Ocala.  As many remember, IHMC is located in the building formerly occupied by the Public Library so it took a while for many of us to feel comfortable carrying on a conversation in anything but a “hushed” tone!  The main common area and the multiple smaller sitting areas have been designed and set up to promote creative thinking and discussion. 

 IHMC stands for Institute for Human & Machine Cognition.  Dr. “Row” Rogacki led us through a brief presentation introducing us to the main focus of the organization. IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System and is affiliated with several Florida universities.

Researchers at IHMC pioneer technologies aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. Our human-centered approach often results in systems that can be regarded as cognitive or perceptual prostheses, much as eyeglasses are a sort of ocular prosthesis. These systems fit the human and machine components together in ways that exploit their respective strengths and mitigate their respective weaknesses. The design and fit of computational prostheses require a broader interdisciplinary range than is typically found in one organization, thus IHMC staff includes computer scientists, cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists, physicians, philosophers, engineers and social scientists of various stripes, as well as some people who resist all attempts to classify them.

 Current active research areas include: knowledge modeling and sharing, adjustable autonomy, robotics, advanced interfaces and displays, communication and collaboration, computer-mediated learning systems, intelligent data understanding, software agents, expertise studies, work practice simulation, knowledge representation, and other related areas.

 IHMC faculty and staff collaborate extensively with industry and government to develop science and technology that can be enabling with respect to society’s broader goals.

 In addition to the presentation by Dr. Rogacki we also heard from a delegation from Citrus County explaining some of the benefits that the upcoming expansion of Port Citrus could have on the Central Florida area.  See Latest News section of website for pictures from October’s event!