MACH-My Automated Conversation coacH

MACH:My Automated Conversation coacH

Photo by Manohar Srikanth

MACH, My Automated Conversation coacH, is a system for people to practice social interactions in face-to-face scenarios. MACH consists of a 3D character that can see, hear, and make its own decisions in real time.

The system was validated in the context of job interviews with 90 MIT undergraduate students. Students who interacted with MACH demonstrated significant performance improvement compared to the students in the control group. We are currently expanding this technology to open up new possibilities in behavioral health (e.g., treating people with Asperger syndrome, social phobia, PTSD) as well as designing new interaction paradigms in human-computer interaction and robotics.

The video below describes the motivation behind the project.

Here is the overall video.

Here is an example of one of the MIT undergraduate students before and after the intervention.

Here is a clip demonstrating MIT students interacting with MACH.

The video below demonstrates a scenario where MACH interrupts the participants for speaking for long time. Do you think the participant gets upset for being interrupted every time?

Publications:

M. E. Hoque, M. Courgeon, B. Mutlu, J-C. Martin, R. W. Picard, MACH: My Automated Conversation coacH, In the 15th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp), September 2013.

M.E. Hoque, "Computers to Help with Conversations: Affective Framework to Enhance Human Nonverbal Skills," MIT PhD Thesis, September, 2013 [Recorded Thesis Defense]