In 1990, Australian inventor and professional golfer Rick Baker conceived a system that would allow computers to receive information relating to a person and/or object, compare that information with stored expert knowledge, generate visual instructional content, generate appropriate audio instructional comments, and combine both into a personalized audio-visual instructional presentation.
At the time, the idea pointed far beyond ordinary instructional video and toward a future where computers could generate personalized instruction and advice tailored to the individual circumstances being analyzed.
The original concept was inspired by professional golf instruction, but it was not limited to golf.
Rick Baker understood that a good expert does more than provide general advice. An expert observes, compares, shows, explains, corrects, and guides.
Around the same time, television programs were beginning to show golfers being filmed on video for motion analysis and swing comparison.
Rick began asking a simple but powerful question:
Could a person receive expert instruction without the expert needing to be physically present?
That question led to a much larger concept.
A person's movement, or an object involved in that movement, could be captured by a video camera, transmitted over a communication network to a computer database, compared with stored expert knowledge, and then returned as a personalized audio-visual instructional presentation.
The major breakthrough was not simply capturing motion or storing information.
The breakthrough was the computer's ability to automatically generate a personalized visual instructional presentation together with suitable audio instructional comments.
Human experts normally teach by showing a person something visually while also explaining it verbally.
Rick Baker believed computers could eventually perform a similar role.
Instead of simply displaying fixed information, the computer could generate guidance, instruction, or advice adapted to the person, object, activity, movement, or situation being analyzed.
This shifted the computer from simply processing information into a system capable of generating personalized audio-visual instruction and advice.
In the early 1990s, this type of computer-generated personalized audio-visual instruction was very different from ordinary instructional media such as VHS tapes, books, or static computer programs.
One of the greatest challenges was that many of the technologies needed to fully develop the invention were still immature in 1990.
Motion tracking, telecommunications, graphics processing, sensors, and computing power were all far more limited than they are today.
Despite these technical limitations, the invention pointed toward a future where computers could deliver increasingly adaptive, visual, and personalized instruction or advice tailored to the circumstances being analyzed.
As artificial intelligence, motion sensing, communications, and real-time computing advanced over the following decades, many aspects of the original concept slowly became achievable.
Rick Baker believed that faster computers alone were not enough to create truly useful instructional systems.
The missing step was enabling computers to generate personalized visual and verbal guidance in a manner similar to a human expert.
That idea now connects strongly with modern artificial intelligence, virtual coaching, personalized learning, motion sensing, wearable devices, adaptive instruction, autonomous systems, robotics, and real-time guidance technologies.
Final Step - AI presents the story of how one early concept helped point toward a future of computer-generated personalized audio-visual instruction and advice.