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.

Abstract

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.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 1, 2016
• Publication Date: Aug 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: Sep 22, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 22, 2016
• Journal: ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
• Print ISSN: 1073-0516
• Electronic ISSN: 1557-7325
• Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 23
• Issue: 4
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2943770
• Keywords: Interactive intelligent systems, human–agent interaction, flexible autonomy, smart grid, field study, internet of things
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/797109
• Publisher URL: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2983309.2943770
• Additional Information: ©ACM, 2016. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), Vol. 23, Issue 4, (August 2016) http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2943770