Human media interface system for the next generation plant operation

An overview is given of a project on "Development of a human interface for the next generation plant operation" running as a subproject of the MITI-funded Human Media project. The goals of the project include developing a next generation human centered interface for plant operation. We adopted an oil refinery plant as a task domain and have developed an interface system consisting of: an Interface Agent which is responsible for plant monitoring and for direct interaction with operators; a Virtual Plant Agent responsible for 3D virtual display of the plant; a Semantic Information Presentation Agent for presentation of semantically interpreted information based on a sophisticated model of the plant; an Ontology Server for standardizing of Agents' understanding of the plant; and a Distributed Collaboration Infrastructure for enabling agents to perform collaboration. Design philosophies and a project overview are presented.