Learning by Demonstration for a Collaborative Planning Environment

Learning by demonstration technology has long held the promise to empower non-programmers to customize and extend software. We describe the deployment of a learning by demonstration capability to support user creation of automated procedures in a collaborative planning environment that is used widely by the U.S. Army. This technology, which has been in operational use since the summer of 2010, has helped to reduce user workloads by automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks. The technology has also provided the unexpected benefit of enabling standardization of products and processes.