Managing Control, Convenience and Autonomy

There are many arguments for and against the use of autonomous-agents in ambient intelligence and intelligent environments. Some researchers maintain that it is vital to restrict autonomy of agents so that users have complete control over the system; whereas, many others maintain that there is a greater benefit to be gained by employing autonomous-agents to take some of the work load off the user and increase user convenience. Both of these approaches have their distinct advantages but they are not suitable for all since people’s opinions and concerns regarding autonomy are highly individual and can differ greatly from person to person. This work explores how it is possible to make intelligent environments more dynamic and personalisable by equipping them with adjustable autonomy, which allows the user to increase or decrease agent autonomy in order to find a comfortable sweet-spot between relinquishing/maintaining control and gaining/losing convenience. This chapter discusses how adjustable autonomy can be achieved in intelligent environments, reports on a recent online survey conducted to gauge people’s opinions of different levels of in intelligent environments, and discusses a user study for which an experimental adjustable autonomy enabled intelligent environment was developed. This work aims to raise awareness of the issues with using static (and extreme) levels of autonomy amongst researchers of intelligent environments and ambient intelligent environments.

2012

There are many arguments for and against the use of autonomous-agents in intelligent environments. Some researchers maintain that it is of utmost importance to give complete control to users, and hence greatly restrict autonomy of agents; whereas, others believe that is it preferable to increase user convenience by allowing agents to operate autonomously on the user's behalf. While both of these approaches have their distinct merits, they are not suitable for all users. As people's opinions and concerns regarding agent autonomy are highly individual, depending on a wide range of factors and often changing over time, a much more dynamic approach to agent autonomy is needed. This work explores how it is possible to equip intelligent environments with an adjustable autonomy mechanism, which allows an individual user to increase or decrease agent autonomy in order to find their own comfortable sweet-spot between maintaining/relinquishing control and gaining/losing convenience. This paper presents the Adjustable Autonomy Intelligent Environment (AAIE) model, discusses how adjustable autonomy can be achieved in intelligent environments, and discusses the major findings from a recent online survey and user study, which highlight the major factors and concerns of users that determine their personal preferences towards different levels of autonomy.

Intelligent …

Various approaches to the configuration and control of intelligent environments have been researched in the past. The majority of these however, make use of either exclusively autonomous or exclusively end-user driven techniques which, in certain situations, may be an issue. A number of users may be reluctant to allow an autonomous system to monitor and interpret every action they take while, on the other hand, some users may be unable or unwilling to program and configure such a complex (end-user driven) system alone. This work-inprogress paper outlines our preliminary work aimed at exploring a solution to this issue by investigating the possibility of creating a hybrid autonomous-agent/enduser driven system that enables the user to set the level of autonomy for any given part of an intelligent environment. The principle contributions of this paper are to expose the issues regarding intelligent environment management systems, to give a comprehensive review of related work on adjustable autonomy and to present a conceptual model and an autonomy metric that can be used as a foundation of future research into developing hybrid autonomous-agent/end-user driven systems. This work forms part of an ongoing three year research project, funded by BT, that seeks to understand and address user concerns with the aim of equipping intelligent environments with better management systems and, furthermore, making intelligent environments more commercially deployable. Given the ongoing nature of this work, we propose to report any significant progress of this research at subsequent IE conferences until this work is complete.

2011

There is a long-standing debate over the role that intelligent agents should play and how much autonomy they should be given in user-centric systems such as intelligent environments and other pervasive computing technologies. A recent online survey has been conducted to assess people's opinions of the use of autonomy in intelligent environments. In order to conduct this survey, an animated video was created to explain the necessary concepts of intelligent environments to the survey participants. This short paper gives an overview of the online survey and discusses the explanation video.

2011

In intelligent environment research, many believe that we should focus on developing end-user driven systems, seeking to empower the user; whereas, many others maintain that intelligent environments should be autonomous-agent driven, minimising user cognitive loading. We however, follow the premise that users of intelligent environments should be given a choice of how much autonomy they would like to keep and how much they wish to delegate to intelligent agents. This paper gives a brief overview of previous studies of user needs and concerns in intelligent environments and reports on a recent online survey that was conducted to assess people's opinions of the use of autonomy in intelligent environments. We aim to raise awareness of the issues with using static (and extreme) levels of autonomy amongst researchers of intelligent environments and pervasive computing systems.

There are many arguments for and against the use of autonomous agents in intelligent environments. Some researchers maintain that it is of utmost importance to give complete control to users, and hence greatly restrict autonomy of agents; whereas, others believe that is it preferable to increase user convenience by allowing agents to operate autonomously on the user’s behalf. While both of these approaches have their distinct merits, they are not suitable for all users. As people’s opinions and concerns regarding agent autonomy are highly individual, depending on a wide range of factors and often changing over time, a much more dynamic approach to agent autonomy is needed.

Autonomy of embedded agents in intelligent environments is highly debated topic; while some believe that agents should have very minimal autonomy and should only act as directly instructed by the user, others consider providing agents with autonomy to be an essential aspect to building intelligent environments. This paper reports on the current progress of our project to enable human users and agents to collaborate in managing intelligent environments as a team. We seek to develop an adjustable-autonomy agent in an effort to explore user acceptance of pervasive computing and the use of autonomous agents therein, as wells as aiming to improve the robustness and reliability of future intelligent environment systems. We present our Adjustable-autonomy Behaviour-Based Agent (ABBA) architecture model and discuss our initial trials with our prototype system, built on a smart home emulator, which demonstrate the plausibility of employing adjustable autonomy in full-scale intelligent environments and pervasive computing systems.

Computers, 2012

Our everyday environments are gradually becoming intelligent, facilitated both by technological development and user activities. Although large-scale intelligent environments are still rare in actual everyday use, they have been studied for quite a long time, and several user studies have been carried out. In this paper, we present a user-centric view of intelligent environments based on published research results and our own experiences from user studies with concepts and prototypes. We analyze user acceptance and users' expectations that affect users' willingness to start using intelligent environments and to continue using them. We discuss user experience of interacting with intelligent environments where physical and virtual elements are intertwined. Finally, we touch on the role of users in shaping their own intelligent environments instead of just using ready-made environments. People are not merely "using" the intelligent environments but they live in them, and they experience the environments via embedded services and new interaction tools as well as the physical and social environment. Intelligent environments should provide emotional as well as instrumental value to the people who live in them, and the environments should be trustworthy and controllable both by regular users and occasional visitors. Understanding user expectations and user experience in intelligent environments,

IEEE Expert / IEEE Intelligent Systems, 2004

The Essex intelligent dormitory, iDorm, uses embedded agents to create an ambient-intelligence environment. In a five-and-a-half-day experiment, a user occupied the iDorm, testing its ability to learn user behavior and adapt to user needs. The embedded agent discreetly controls the iDorm according to user preferences. Our work focuses on developing learning and adaptation techniques for embedded agents. We seek to provide online, lifelong, personalized learning of anticipatory adaptive control to realize the ambient-intelligence vision in ubiquitous-computing environments. We developed the Essex intelligent dormitory, or iDorm, as a test bed for this work and an exemplar of this approach.

One of the striking aspects of world-wide-web is how it has empowered ordinary non-technical people to participate in a digital revolution by transforming the way services such as shopping, education and entertainment are offered and consumed. The proliferation of networked appliances, sensors and actuators, such as those found in digital homes heralds a similar ‘sea change’ in the capabilities of ordinary people to customise and utilise the electronic spaces they inhabit. By coordinating the actions of networked devices or services, it is possible for the environment to behave in a holistic and reactive manner to satisfy the occupants needs; creating an intelligent environment. Further, by deconstructing traditional home appliances into sets of more elemental network accessible services, it is possible to reconstruct either the original appliance or to create new user defined appliances by combining basic network services in novel ways; creating a so called virtual appliance. This principle can be extended to decompose and recompose software applications allowing users to create their own bespoke applications. Collectively, such user created entities are referred to as Meta – appliances or –applications, more generally abbreviated to MAps. Deconstruction and user customized MAps raise exciting possibilities for occupants of future intelligent environments, and sets significant research challenges [Chin 09]. For example, how can MAps be constructed and managed by ordinary non-expert home occupants? At one extreme it is possible to use artificial intelligence (AI) techniques and equipment, such as autonomous intelligent agents. These monitor an occupants habitual behaviour, modelling their behaviours, and creating rule-based profiles (self programming) so they can preemptively set the environment to what they anticipate the user would like [Augusto 06]. However, some people have privacy concerns about what is being recorded, when it is being recorded and to whom (or what) any information is communicated. These concerns are particularly acute with autonomous agents, in which people have little direct control. Such matters are especially sensitive when the technology is used in the private space of someone’s home. Frequently, endusers are given very little choice in setting-up digital home technology and are obliged to accept whatever is offered [Callaghan et-al 08]. Apart from the issues of privacy and trust, we argue that creativity is an essential and distinctive human quality, and that many people would enjoy the process of creating their own novel networked appliances and personalising their ’electronic spaces’, providing they can be shielded from unnecessary technical complexity. This has parallels to the common practice of people decorating their own homes with paintings, walls hangings, pictures, colour schemes and furniture. This rationale has led many researchers to investigate what is termed ‘end-user programming’, a methodology aimed at allowing non-technical people to personalise their own digital spaces with network enabled embedded-computer based devices. Historically, programming has only been accessible to well-qualified professionals, such as computer scientists, or the outcome of self-programming (learning) using autonomous intelligent agents. The challenge for achieving an end-user programming vision is to devise programming methodologies that are usable by non-technical people. In this chapter we begin by reviewing current research into end-user programming systems, especially those for the home. We describe approaches that range from transposing conventional programming constructs into graphical or physical iconic objects, to those that adopt radically new programming metaphors. By way of an example of these new approaches, we describe a novel end-user programming approach developed at the University of Essex called Pervasiveinteractive- Programming (PiP) (UK patent No. GB0523246.7) and a service coordination model known as Meta-Appliances/Applications (MAps). We report on an evaluation of user experiences using PiP in a digital home, the University of Essex iSpace. We conclude this chapter by reflecting on the main findings of our work.