Virtual Instructor Agents

Discovery Machine® brings significant expertise to bear on the problem of knowledge-based technology development.

It has long been established that the best way to learn is to have a private tutor who works with you one-on-one, adapting the training to your learning needs.   In such a setting, one can: ask the tutor questions, get feedback on an approach to solving a problem, and suggestions on how to improve. A skilled tutor will identify a student’s strengths and weaknesses and adapt teaching to emphasize solutions that take advantage of the student’s individual talents. Historically, apprenticeships provided a way for master artisans to tutor students on the job. Apprenticeships allowed students to learn needed techniques by observing and performing under the scrutiny of the expert.  After many years of guidance, the apprentice would become a master in his own right.    Education today is rarely approached in this way. The constraints of time and money prevent the one-on-one training found in apprenticeship programs. Private tutors are too costly for all but the most affluent, while experts are, in general, too busy to mentor as they once did.

The need for individualized instruction, however, has remained. Discovery Machine® provides virtual instructor agents which mimic human instructors. Human instructors provide a type of apprentice training.  These instructors watch what the trainees do and inject challenges based on how the trainees have performed. They also adapt the training to make sure that the trainee is getting the most out of their training.  

Discovery Machine® brings significant expertise to bear on the problem of knowledge-based technology development. Based on award-winning research from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Discovery Machine® has developed a full suite of software and complementary services for addressing the problem of knowledge deployment. Repeat commercial customers have proven deployed knowledge provides value. Discovery Machine® has distilled our expertise in capturing knowledge into a highly trainable repeatable process which enables organizations to capture knowledge and embed it in their systems and products.