AGENT INTERACTION IN AMBIENT INTELLIGENT ENVIRONMENTS Thomas Grill Ismail Khalil Ibrahim Gabriele Kotsis Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria Altenbergerstrasse 69, 4040 Linz Email: {Thomas.Grill, Ismail.Khalil-Ibrahim, Gabriele.Kotsis}@jku.ac.at Abstract— Most of the research on ambient intelligence fo- cusses on how to integrate smart objects into our real environ- ment without considering how users interact with these objects and make use of their functionality. In this paper, we discuss interaction design methods in an ambient intelligent environment in order to develop a model for interaction design between the user who resides in the real world and the software components that are working behind the scenes. I. I NTRODUCTION A. Motivation The vision of ambient intelligence (AmI) where people are empowered through a digital environment that is aware of their presence and context, and is sensitive, adaptive, and responsive to their needs, habits, gestures and emotions is not too far to be realized. Advances in ubiquitous computing, ubiquitous communication and intelligent user interfaces make it easy to build ambient intelligence where computers are attached, embedded or even blended at almost everything in our lives. The technology itself is disappearing and we are moving from desktop computers to embedded computers. This poses the problem of how people will interact with the environment. Further the user is exposed to the situation of using functional- ity without dedicated devices. This results in the question how to design a user interface that enables the user to communicate with the technology. One possible solution is to use software agents [1] to provide more personal, adaptive, intelligent, proactive, multi- tasking and multi-user interfaces. These interface agents are autonomous software components that undertake tasks on behalf of their users. Most of the research on ubiquitous computing focuses on how to find new devices and applications and integrate them into our daily life without considering how this will affect the way we need to interact with these devices and use their functionality. While the users need to smoothly interact in the AmI en- vironment, user interfaces are getting more and more compli- cated which makes the effort users have to make grow steadily. With current standard artifacts like screens and keyboards, they are not sufficient to provide the functionality of such systems and hence create the need for a more intelligent user interface that enables user centric ways for communicating with the AmI. Looking at the AmI environment and the possibilities that arise with respect to the interaction potential between the user and the system, a focus on interaction design is essential. Interaction design (IxD) defines how interactive systems com- municate their functionality to the user and describes how the user interacts with a system. B. Related Work Philips developed scenarios in their HomeLab [2] where they tried to realize typical usage scenarios in an AmI home environment. PHENOM [2] is an approach to use multiple interfaces dynamically in order to enable the user to view her favorite photos everywhere in her home and the ”INTELLI- GENT PERSONAL CARE ENVIRONMENT” [2] enhances a mirrors functionality by providing a projection screen that users can use for watching broadcasts or even communicating with other people while being in the bathroom. Further research focuses on the technical realization and frameworks for AmI environments. The SoFAR framework [3] represents an agent framework while Ponnekanti et al. [4] target the service layer of ubiquitous frameworks. Our research enhances existing approaches by means and methods for interaction designers to implement interaction in AmI environments. The resulting scenarios focus on the interaction between the user and an agent that is located in the AmI environment. In this paper, we discuss the available interaction metaphors in an AmI environment with respect to the interaction possi- bilities between a user who resides in the real world and the software components that are working behind the scenes. II. COMPONENTS OF AN AMBIENT INTELLIGENCE In ambient intelligence people are benefiting from the func- tionality of the artifacts that are embedded in the surrounding environment. Functionalities in such AmI environments are spread over various computing devices. Because of that AmI environments may be subject to changes as such computing devices may be introduced dynamically over time. The com- ponents of the AmI environment are classified according to two aspects. On the one hand the physical architecture of