2008

Fox, Stephen; Ehlen, Patrick; Purver, Matthew; Bratt, Elizabeth; Frampton, Matthew; Kobayashi, Ichiro; Jones, Bevan; Munro, Robert; Peters, Stanley

Global skill shortages are reported in many occupations. Existing strategies for addressing skill shortages are not successful and, as a result, skill shortages are an intractable problem. A new strategy, real-time communication of skill knowledge without human instructors, has the potential to bring about radical reductions in skill shortages. The goal of the study reported in this VTT Working Paper was to determine how skill knowledge could be communicated in real-time without reliance on access to a person with relevant existing skill knowledge. In particular, the communication of manual skills. The research involved literature review and field study. Literature review encompassed studies concerned with skill knowledge, communication media, and computational semantics. Field study involved interviews with industry practitioners seeking to address skill shortages and computational semantics scientists. The study revealed that many of the technologies and methods required for the real-time communication of skill knowledge without human instructors are already available. Further, the study revealed that computational semantics is essential to the successful application and integration of these technologies and methods.