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A field study of human-agent interaction for electricity tariff switching

A field study of human-agent interaction for electricity tariff switching
A field study of human-agent interaction for electricity tariff switching
Recently, many algorithms have been developed for autonomous agents to manage home energy use on behalf of their human owners. By so doing, it is expected that agents will be more efficient at, for example, choosing the best energy tariff to switch to when dynamically priced tariffs come about. However, to date, there has been no validation of such technologies in any field trial. In particular, it has not been shown whether users prefer fully autonomous agents as opposed to controlling their preferences manually. Hence, in this paper we describe a novel platform, called Tariff Agent, to study notions of flexible autonomy in the context of tariff switching. Tariff Agent uses real-world datasets and real-time electricity monitoring to instantiate a scenario where human participants may have to make, or delegate to their agent (in different ways), tariff switching decisions given uncertainties about their own consumption and tariff prices. We carried out a field trial with 10 participants and, from both quantitative and qualitative results, formulate novel design guidelines for systems that implement flexible autonom.
965-972
Alan, Alper
b3860a02-91c3-46bd-a401-1f3d51771eb0
Costanza, Enrico
0868f119-c42e-4b5f-905f-fe98c1beeded
Fischer, J.
dfc0e6e3-5b30-4940-9454-dee6381a0dcc
Ramchurn, Sarvapali
1d62ae2a-a498-444e-912d-a6082d3aaea3
Rodden, T.
98078833-9f01-4db0-9a29-702a0109b179
Jennings, N.R.
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30
Alan, Alper
b3860a02-91c3-46bd-a401-1f3d51771eb0
Costanza, Enrico
0868f119-c42e-4b5f-905f-fe98c1beeded
Fischer, J.
dfc0e6e3-5b30-4940-9454-dee6381a0dcc
Ramchurn, Sarvapali
1d62ae2a-a498-444e-912d-a6082d3aaea3
Rodden, T.
98078833-9f01-4db0-9a29-702a0109b179
Jennings, N.R.
ab3d94cc-247c-4545-9d1e-65873d6cdb30

Alan, Alper, Costanza, Enrico, Fischer, J., Ramchurn, Sarvapali, Rodden, T. and Jennings, N.R. (2014) A field study of human-agent interaction for electricity tariff switching. 13th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, , Paris, France. 05 - 09 May 2014. pp. 965-972 .

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

Recently, many algorithms have been developed for autonomous agents to manage home energy use on behalf of their human owners. By so doing, it is expected that agents will be more efficient at, for example, choosing the best energy tariff to switch to when dynamically priced tariffs come about. However, to date, there has been no validation of such technologies in any field trial. In particular, it has not been shown whether users prefer fully autonomous agents as opposed to controlling their preferences manually. Hence, in this paper we describe a novel platform, called Tariff Agent, to study notions of flexible autonomy in the context of tariff switching. Tariff Agent uses real-world datasets and real-time electricity monitoring to instantiate a scenario where human participants may have to make, or delegate to their agent (in different ways), tariff switching decisions given uncertainties about their own consumption and tariff prices. We carried out a field trial with 10 participants and, from both quantitative and qualitative results, formulate novel design guidelines for systems that implement flexible autonom.

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More information

e-pub ahead of print date: May 2014
Published date: 2014
Venue - Dates: 13th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, , Paris, France, 2014-05-05 - 2014-05-09
Organisations: Agents, Interactions & Complexity

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 360820
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/360820
PURE UUID: 16bd3641-1818-44f8-8720-208ed1f98bb0
ORCID for Sarvapali Ramchurn: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9686-4302

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 28 Dec 2013 17:23
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:22

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Contributors

Author: Alper Alan
Author: Enrico Costanza
Author: J. Fischer
Author: Sarvapali Ramchurn ORCID iD
Author: T. Rodden
Author: N.R. Jennings

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