Tariff agent: interacting with a future smart energy system at home

Smart systems are becoming increasingly ubiquitous and consequently transforming our lives. The level of system autonomy plays a vital role in the development of smart systems as it profoundly affects how people and these systems interact with each other. However, to date, there are very few studies...

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Main Authors: Alan, Alper T., Costanza, Enrico, Ramchurn, Sarvapali D., Fischer, Joel E., Rodden, Tom, Jennings, Nicholas R.
Format: Article
Published: Association for Computing Machinery 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/35867/
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author Alan, Alper T.
Costanza, Enrico
Ramchurn, Sarvapali D.
Fischer, Joel E.
Rodden, Tom
Jennings, Nicholas R.
author_facet Alan, Alper T.
Costanza, Enrico
Ramchurn, Sarvapali D.
Fischer, Joel E.
Rodden, Tom
Jennings, Nicholas R.
author_sort Alan, Alper T.
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Smart systems are becoming increasingly ubiquitous and consequently transforming our lives. The level of system autonomy plays a vital role in the development of smart systems as it profoundly affects how people and these systems interact with each other. However, to date, there are very few studies on human interaction with such systems. This paper presents findings from two field studies where two different prototypes for automating energy tariff-switching were developed and evaluated in the wild. Both prototypes offer flexible autonomy by which users can shift the system's level of autonomy among three options: suggestion-only, semi-autonomy, and full autonomy, whenever they like. Our findings based on thematic analysis show that flexible autonomy is a promising way to sustain users' engagement with smart systems, despite their occasional mistakes. The findings also suggest that users take responsibility for the undesired outcomes of automated actions when delegation of autonomy can be adjusted flexibly.
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spelling nottingham-358672020-05-04T17:58:05Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/35867/ Tariff agent: interacting with a future smart energy system at home Alan, Alper T. Costanza, Enrico Ramchurn, Sarvapali D. Fischer, Joel E. Rodden, Tom Jennings, Nicholas R. Smart systems are becoming increasingly ubiquitous and consequently transforming our lives. The level of system autonomy plays a vital role in the development of smart systems as it profoundly affects how people and these systems interact with each other. However, to date, there are very few studies on human interaction with such systems. This paper presents findings from two field studies where two different prototypes for automating energy tariff-switching were developed and evaluated in the wild. Both prototypes offer flexible autonomy by which users can shift the system's level of autonomy among three options: suggestion-only, semi-autonomy, and full autonomy, whenever they like. Our findings based on thematic analysis show that flexible autonomy is a promising way to sustain users' engagement with smart systems, despite their occasional mistakes. The findings also suggest that users take responsibility for the undesired outcomes of automated actions when delegation of autonomy can be adjusted flexibly. Association for Computing Machinery 2016-08-01 Article PeerReviewed Alan, Alper T., Costanza, Enrico, Ramchurn, Sarvapali D., Fischer, Joel E., Rodden, Tom and Jennings, Nicholas R. (2016) Tariff agent: interacting with a future smart energy system at home. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 23 (4). 25:1-25:28. ISSN 1557-7325 Interactive intelligent systems human–agent interaction flexible autonomy smart grid field study internet of things http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2983309.2943770 doi:10.1145/2943770 doi:10.1145/2943770
spellingShingle Interactive intelligent systems
human–agent interaction
flexible autonomy
smart grid
field study
internet of things
Alan, Alper T.
Costanza, Enrico
Ramchurn, Sarvapali D.
Fischer, Joel E.
Rodden, Tom
Jennings, Nicholas R.
Tariff agent: interacting with a future smart energy system at home
title Tariff agent: interacting with a future smart energy system at home
title_full Tariff agent: interacting with a future smart energy system at home
title_fullStr Tariff agent: interacting with a future smart energy system at home
title_full_unstemmed Tariff agent: interacting with a future smart energy system at home
title_short Tariff agent: interacting with a future smart energy system at home
title_sort tariff agent: interacting with a future smart energy system at home
topic Interactive intelligent systems
human–agent interaction
flexible autonomy
smart grid
field study
internet of things
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/35867/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/35867/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/35867/