Abstract
The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and services and their integration in intelligent environments creates the need for a simple yet effective way of controlling and communicating with them. Towards such a direction, this work presents ParlAmI, a conversational framework featuring a multimodal chatbot that permits users to create simple “if-then” rules to define the behavior of an intelligent environment. ParlAmI delivers a disembodied conversational agent in the form of a messaging application named MAI, and an embodied conversational agent named nAoMI employing the programmable humanoid robot NAO. This paper describes the requirements and architecture of ParlAmI, the infrastructure of the “Intelligent Home” in which ParlAmI is deployed, the characteristics and functionality of both MAI and nAoMI, and finally presents the findings of a user experience evaluation that was conducted with the participation of sixteen users.
Highlights
The emergence of the Ambient Intelligence (AmI) [1] paradigm and the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) [2] have raised the need for appropriate tools that enable users to connect and manage the devices and services that are integrated inside “Intelligent Environments”
ParlAmI consists of multiple services (Figure 3) that expose their functionality through a Messaging web app is a service that hosts and controls a web-based chatbot user interface intended for end-users
The multimodal chatbot featured by ParlAmI is available both as a disembodied conversational agent via messaging application (MAI), which can be launched on the inhabitants’ personal devices, and an embodied conversational agent via nAoMI, which can verbally speak the chatbot’s response
Summary
The emergence of the Ambient Intelligence (AmI) [1] paradigm and the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) [2] have raised the need for appropriate tools that enable users to connect and manage the devices and services that are integrated inside “Intelligent Environments”. This work presents ParlAmI [24], a conversational framework featuring a multimodal chatbot that permits users to create “if-” rules so as to dictate the behavior of an intelligent environment It delivers a disembodied conversational agent in the form of a messaging application that can be launched on the inhabitants’ personal devices and employs the programmable humanoid robot NAO [25] in order to realize an embodied conversational agent. ParlAmI aims to assist inexperienced users in programming their environments in a simple yet effective manner while providing the necessary flexibility to define complex behaviors Towards this end, it interoperates with the LECTOR framework [26] so as to specify which conditions signify a behavior that requires some action (i.e., triggers), and determine the appropriate interventions to accommodate/help/support the users (i.e., actions). The following sections present (i) a discussion of related work, (ii) the infrastructure of the Intelligent Home where ParlAmI is deployed, (iii) a description of the ParlAmI system, (iv) its two faces, i.e., the two conversation agents MAI and nAoMI, (v) the results of a user-based evaluation that was conducted, and (vi) a discussion regarding its findings and future plans
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