Internet of Assistants: Humans Can Get Assistance Anywhere, Anytime and Any Areas

Abstract

Abstract Internet of Things (IoT) applications such as Smart Cities, Smart Healthcare, etc. are tremendously on the rise which leads us to the research domain of how humans interact with the smart environments in terms of privacy, autonomy, and efficiency. One such research domain is that of intelligent personal assistants that target the participants of the smart application environments. So far, studies in the area of Personal Assistants (PA) mainly contribute towards assisting individuals in interacting with the smart environment with respect to their privacy and autonomy. We would like to take the PAs to the next level so that we could provide customized services to them based on their privacy settings. In this paper, we introduce a new paradigm called the Internet of Assistants (IoA) where assistants from personal and smart environments are interconnected so that they can interact with each other using ontology. We provide the architectural framework called Evolutional Smart Assistant Platform (ESAP) that enables the successful implementation of smart assistant applications. IoA provides numerous possibilities of applications few of which are discussed in this paper. For instance, in a smart eating environment, a PA of a diner can interact with a service assistant (SA) of a restaurant to provide a customized, enjoyable and healthy dining experience.