Overcoming barriers and increasing independence: service robots for elderly and disabled people

This paper discusses the potential for service robots to overcome barriers and increase independence of elderly and disabled people. It includes a brief overview of the existing uses of service robots by disabled and elderly people and advances in technology which will make new uses possible and provides suggestions for some of these new applications. The paper also considers the design and other conditions to be met for user acceptance. It also discusses the complementarity of assistive service robots and personal assistance and considers the types of applications and users for which service robots are and are not suitable

Motivations, Classification and Model Trial of Conversational Agents for Insurance Companies

Advances in artificial intelligence have renewed interest in conversational agents. So-called chatbots have reached maturity for industrial applications. German insurance companies are interested in improving their customer service and digitizing their business processes. In this work we investigate the potential use of conversational agents in insurance companies by determining which classes of agents are of interest to insurance companies, finding relevant use cases and requirements, and developing a prototype for an exemplary insurance scenario. Based on this approach, we derive key findings for conversational agent implementation in insurance companies.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure, accepted for presentation at The International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence 2019 (ICAART 2019

Value Co-Creation in Smart Services: A Functional Affordances Perspective on Smart Personal Assistants

In the realm of smart services, smart personal assistants (SPAs) have become a popular medium for value co-creation between service providers and users. The market success of SPAs is largely based on their innovative material properties, such as natural language user interfaces, machine learning-powered request handling and service provision, and anthropomorphism. In different combinations, these properties offer users entirely new ways to intuitively and interactively achieve their goals and thus co-create value with service providers. But how does the nature of the SPA shape value co-creation processes? In this paper, we look through a functional affordances lens to theorize about the effects of different types of SPAs (i.e., with different combinations of material properties) on users’ value co-creation processes. Specifically, we collected SPAs from research and practice by reviewing scientific literature and web resources, developed a taxonomy of SPAs’ material properties, and performed a cluster analysis to group SPAs of a similar nature. We then derived 2 general and 11 cluster-specific propositions on how different material properties of SPAs can yield different affordances for value co-creation. With our work, we point out that smart services require researchers and practitioners to fundamentally rethink value co-creation as well as revise affordances theory to address the dynamic nature of smart technology as a service counterpart

Digital inclusion - the vision, the challenges and the way forward

This paper considers the vision and aspiration of digital inclusion, and then examines the current reality. It looks beyond the rhetoric to provide an analysis of the status quo, a consideration of some facilitators and challenges to progress and some suggestions for moving forward with renewed energy and commitment. The far-reaching benefits of digital inclusion and the crucial role it plays in enabling full participation in our digital society are considered. At the heart of the vision of universal digital inclusion is the deceptively simple goal to ensure that everyone is able to access and experience the wide-ranging benefits and transformational opportunities and impacts it offers. The reality is a long way from the vision: inequality of access still exists despite many national campaigns and initiatives to reduce it. The benefits and beneficiaries of a digital society are not just the individual but all stakeholders in the wider society. Research evidence has shown that the critical success factors for successful digital participation are (i) appropriate design and (ii) readily available and on-going ICT (Information and Communication Technology) support in the community. Challenges and proven solutions are presented. The proposition of community hubs in local venues to provide user-centred ICT support and learning for older and disabled people is presented. While the challenges to achieve digital inclusion are very considerable, the knowledge of how to achieve it and the technologies which enable it already exist. Harnessing of political will is necessary to make digital inclusion a reality rather than a vision. With the cooperation and commitment of all stakeholders actualisation of the vision of a digitally inclusive society, while challenging, can be achieved and will yield opportunities and rewards that eclipse the cost of implementation

Anticipatory Mobile Computing: A Survey of the State of the Art and Research Challenges

Today's mobile phones are far from mere communication devices they were ten years ago. Equipped with sophisticated sensors and advanced computing hardware, phones can be used to infer users' location, activity, social setting and more. As devices become increasingly intelligent, their capabilities evolve beyond inferring context to predicting it, and then reasoning and acting upon the predicted context. This article provides an overview of the current state of the art in mobile sensing and context prediction paving the way for full-fledged anticipatory mobile computing. We present a survey of phenomena that mobile phones can infer and predict, and offer a description of machine learning techniques used for such predictions. We then discuss proactive decision making and decision delivery via the user-device feedback loop. Finally, we discuss the challenges and opportunities of anticipatory mobile computing.Comment: 29 pages, 5 figure

Perceived creepiness in response to smart home assistants: A multi-method study

Smart home assistants (SHAs) have gained a foothold in many households. Although SHAs have many beneficial capabilities, they also have characteristics that are colloquially described as creepy – a fact that may deter potential users from adopting and utilizing them. Previous research has examined SHAs neither from the perspective of resistance nor the perspective of creepiness. The present research addresses this gap and adopts a multi-method research design with four sequential studies. Study 1 serves as a pre-study and provides initial exploratory insights into the concept of creepiness in the context of SHAs. Study 2 focuses on developing a measurement instrument to assess perceived creepiness. Study 3 uses an online experiment to test the nomological validity of the construct of creepiness in a larger conceptual model. Study 4 further elucidates the underlying behavioral dynamics using focus group analysis. The findings contribute to the literature on the dark side of smart technology by analyzing the triggers and mechanisms underlying perceived creepiness as a novel inhibitor to SHAs. In addition, this study provides actionable design recommendations that allow practitioners to mitigate end users’ potential perceptions of creepiness associated with SHAs and similar smart technologies

‘There are some things that I would never ask Alexa’ – privacy work, contextual integrity, and smart speaker assistants

When new technologies like smart speaker assistants (SSAs) enter private spaces, new threats to privacy emerge. Drawing on the concepts of privacy work [Nippert-Eng, C. E. (2010). Islands of privacy. University of Chicago Press.] and contextual integrity [Nissenbaum, H. F. (2010). Privacy in context: Technology, policy, and the integrity of social life. Stanford Law Books.], this study uses qualitative interviews to explore two questions about SSAs: (1) Which kinds of privacy work do users do?, and (2) What rationales underlie users’ privacy perceptions? We identify a variety of new types of privacy work, such as limiting the dissemination of one’s voice data to a single company, or interrupting conversations during accidental SSA activation. We also identify new privacy rationales including anticipated consequences of information leaks, the importance of users’ privacy skills and awareness, and the role of choice in whether and how to use SSAs. Based on our analysis of privacy rationales, we propose an expansion of the model of contextual integrity [Nissenbaum, H. F. (2010). Privacy in context: Technology, policy, and the integrity of social life. Stanford Law Books.] to improve our ability to understand how users perceive privacy with SSAs and other voluntarily adopted home information technologies. Furthermore, we find that even SSA users who say they have no privacy concerns actually work to protect their privacy. These results complicate previous theory which said that privacy concerns lead to protective behaviour because they suggest that the relationship between these two concepts may be reversed

Experiencing Voice-Activated Artificial Intelligence Assistants in the Home: A Phenomenological Approach

Voice-controlled artificial intelligence (AI) assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s Assistant, serve as the gateway to the Internet of Things and connected home, executing the commands of its users, providing information, entertainment, utility, and convenience while enabling consumers to bypass the advertising they would typically see on a screen. This “screen-less” communication presents significant challenges for brands used to “pushing” messages to audiences in exchange for the content they seek. It also raises questions about data collection, usage, and privacy. Brands need to understand how and why audiences engage with AI assistants, as well as the risks with these devices, in order to determine how to be relevant in a voice-powered world. Because there’s little published research, a phenomenological approach was used to explore the lived meaning and shared experience of having an AI assistant in the home. Three overarching types of experiences with Alexa were revealed: removing friction, enabling personalization, and extending self and enriching life. These experiences encapsulated two types of explicit and implicit goals satisfied through interaction with Alexa, those that related to “Helping do,” focused on functional elements or tasks that Alexa performed, and those related to “Helping become,” encapsulating the transformative results of experiences with Alexa enabling users to become better versions of themselves. This is the first qualitative study to explore the meaning of interacting with AI assistants, and establishes a much-needed foundation of consumer understanding, rooted in the words and perspectives of the audience themselves, on which to build future research. Advisor: Aleidine Moelle

Converged Reality: A Data Management Research Agenda for a Service-, Cloud-, and Data-Driven Era

We are accustomed to distinguishing activities that occur on or through the Internet as distinct from activities that occur in the physical world: online versus offline, virtual reality versus reality, and so on. As Internet-based services have evolved, this distinction has continued to blur. We now have a converged reality: the online does not merely augment the offline; rather, the two are increasingly indistinguishable. Mobility, cloud computing, servicedriven technology, cognitive computing, and Big Data analytics are some of the distinct but related innovations driving this shift. Because the shift is happening in pieces across multiple areas and sectors, our converged reality is emergent and grassroots, not a carefully planned joint effort. There are therefore areas that have been and will be slow to acknowledge and adapt to this shift; data management is one of these areas. This paper describes how this converged reality grew from previous research into bridging online and offline worlds, and how it will lead to a cognitive reality. It identifies enablers and dampeners, and describes a data management research agenda specifically for converged reality. The proposed research agenda is intended to spark discussion and engage further work in this area