Projects
As systems based on human-agent collectives grow in scale, complexity and temporal extent, we will increasingly require a principled science that allows us to reason about the computational and human aspects of these systems if we are to avoid developments that are unsafe, unreliable and lack the appropriate safeguards to ensure societal acceptance. Delivering this science is the core research objective of this programme.
Publications
2014
Alan, Alper; Costanza, Enrico; Fischer, J.; Ramchurn, Sarvapali; Rodden, T.; Jennings, N. R.
A field study of human-agent interaction for electricity tariff switching Proceedings Article
In: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 2014.
@inproceedings{eps360820,
title = {A field study of human-agent interaction for electricity tariff switching},
author = {Alper Alan and Enrico Costanza and J. Fischer and Sarvapali Ramchurn and T. Rodden and N.R. Jennings},
url = {http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/360820/},
year = {2014},
date = {2014-01-01},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems},
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.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
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.
Tran-Thanh, Long; Huynh, Trung Dong; Rosenfield, A; Ramchurn, Sarvapali; Jennings, Nicholas R.
BudgetFix: budget limited crowdsourcing for interdependent task allocation with quality guarantees Proceedings Article
In: 13th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, 2014.
@inproceedings{eps362321,
title = {BudgetFix: budget limited crowdsourcing for interdependent task allocation with quality guarantees},
author = {Long Tran-Thanh and Trung Dong Huynh and A Rosenfield and Sarvapali Ramchurn and Nicholas R. Jennings},
url = {http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/362321/},
year = {2014},
date = {2014-01-01},
booktitle = {13th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems},
publisher = {International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
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Costanza, Enrico; Fischer, Joel E; Colley, James A; Rodden, Tom; Ramchurn, Sarvapali; Jennings, Nicholas R.
Doing the laundry with agents: a field trial of a future smart energy system in the home Proceedings Article
In: ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2014, pp. 813–822, ACM 2014.
@inproceedings{eps361173,
title = {Doing the laundry with agents: a field trial of a future smart energy system in the home},
author = {Enrico Costanza and Joel E Fischer and James A Colley and Tom Rodden and Sarvapali Ramchurn and Nicholas R. Jennings},
url = {http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/361173/},
year = {2014},
date = {2014-01-01},
booktitle = {ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2014},
pages = {813--822},
organization = {ACM},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
2013
Truong, Ngoc Cuong; Tran-Thanh, Long; Costanza, Enrico; Ramchurn, D. Sarvapali
Activity prediction for agent-based home energy management Proceedings Article
In: Agent Technologies for Energy Systems (ATES 2013), 2013.
@inproceedings{eps351238,
title = {Activity prediction for agent-based home energy management},
author = {Ngoc Cuong Truong and Long Tran-Thanh and Enrico Costanza and D. Sarvapali Ramchurn},
url = {http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/351238/},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-01-01},
booktitle = {Agent Technologies for Energy Systems (ATES 2013)},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
Truong, Ngoc Cuong; McInerney, James; Tran-Thanh, Long; Costanza, Enrico; Ramchurn, Sarvapali D.
Forecasting multi-appliance usage for smart home energy management Proceedings Article
In: 23rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2013), 2013.
@inproceedings{eps351242,
title = {Forecasting multi-appliance usage for smart home energy management},
author = {Ngoc Cuong Truong and James McInerney and Long Tran-Thanh and Enrico Costanza and Sarvapali D. Ramchurn},
url = {http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/351242/},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-01-01},
booktitle = {23rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2013)},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
Fischer, Joel E.; Ramchurn, Sarvapali D.; Osborne, Michael A.; Parson, Oliver; Huynh, Trung Dong; Alam, Muddasser; Pantidi, Nadia; Moran, Stuart; Bachour, Khaled; Reece, Steven; Costanza, Enrico; Rodden, Tom; Jennings, Nicholas R.
Recommending Energy Tariffs and Load Shifting Based on Smart Household Usage Profiling Proceedings Article
In: International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, pp. 383–394, 2013.
@inproceedings{eps346991,
title = {Recommending Energy Tariffs and Load Shifting Based on Smart Household Usage Profiling},
author = {Joel E. Fischer and Sarvapali D. Ramchurn and Michael A. Osborne and Oliver Parson and Trung Dong Huynh and Muddasser Alam and Nadia Pantidi and Stuart Moran and Khaled Bachour and Steven Reece and Enrico Costanza and Tom Rodden and Nicholas R. Jennings},
url = {http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/346991/},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-01-01},
booktitle = {International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces},
pages = {383--394},
abstract = {We present a system and study of personalized energy-related recommendation. AgentSwitch utilizes electricity usage data collected from users' households over a period of time to realize a range of smart energy-related recommendations on energy tariffs, load detection and usage shifting. The web service is driven by a third party real-time energy tariff API (uSwitch), an energy data store, a set of algorithms for usage prediction, and appliance-level load disaggregation. We present the system design and user evaluation consisting of interviews and interface walkthroughs. We recruited participants from a previous study during which three months of their household's energy use was recorded to evaluate personalized recommendations in AgentSwitch. Our contributions are a) a systems architecture for personalized energy services; and b) findings from the evaluation that reveal challenges in designing energy-related recommender systems. In response to the challenges we formulate design recommendations to mitigate barriers to switching tariffs, to incentivize load shifting, and to automate energy management.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
We present a system and study of personalized energy-related recommendation. AgentSwitch utilizes electricity usage data collected from users' households over a period of time to realize a range of smart energy-related recommendations on energy tariffs, load detection and usage shifting. The web service is driven by a third party real-time energy tariff API (uSwitch), an energy data store, a set of algorithms for usage prediction, and appliance-level load disaggregation. We present the system design and user evaluation consisting of interviews and interface walkthroughs. We recruited participants from a previous study during which three months of their household's energy use was recorded to evaluate personalized recommendations in AgentSwitch. Our contributions are a) a systems architecture for personalized energy services; and b) findings from the evaluation that reveal challenges in designing energy-related recommender systems. In response to the challenges we formulate design recommendations to mitigate barriers to switching tariffs, to incentivize load shifting, and to automate energy management.
Huynh, Trung Dong; Ebden, Mark; Venanzi, Matteo; Ramchurn, Sarvapali; Roberts, Stephen; Moreau, Luc
Interpretation of Crowdsourced Activities Using Provenance Network Analysis Proceedings Article
In: The First AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, 2013.
@inproceedings{eps357199,
title = {Interpretation of Crowdsourced Activities Using Provenance Network Analysis},
author = {Trung Dong Huynh and Mark Ebden and Matteo Venanzi and Sarvapali Ramchurn and Stephen Roberts and Luc Moreau},
url = {http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/357199/},
year = {2013},
date = {2013-01-01},
booktitle = {The First AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing},
publisher = {Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence},
abstract = {Understanding the dynamics of a crowdsourcing application and controlling the quality of the data it generates is challenging, partly due to the lack of tools to do so. Provenance is a domain-independent means to represent what happened in an application, which can help verify data and infer their quality. It can also reveal the processes that led to a data item and the interactions of contributors with it. Provenance patterns can manifest real-world phenomena such as a significant interest in a piece of content, providing an indication of its quality, or even issues such as undesirable interactions within a group of contributors. This paper presents an application-independent methodology for analysing provenance graphs, constructed from provenance records, to learn about such patterns and to use them for assessing some key properties of crowdsourced data, such as their quality, in an automated manner. Validating this method on the provenance records of CollabMap, an online crowdsourcing mapping application, we demonstrated an accuracy level of over 95% for the trust classification of data generated by the crowd therein.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
Understanding the dynamics of a crowdsourcing application and controlling the quality of the data it generates is challenging, partly due to the lack of tools to do so. Provenance is a domain-independent means to represent what happened in an application, which can help verify data and infer their quality. It can also reveal the processes that led to a data item and the interactions of contributors with it. Provenance patterns can manifest real-world phenomena such as a significant interest in a piece of content, providing an indication of its quality, or even issues such as undesirable interactions within a group of contributors. This paper presents an application-independent methodology for analysing provenance graphs, constructed from provenance records, to learn about such patterns and to use them for assessing some key properties of crowdsourced data, such as their quality, in an automated manner. Validating this method on the provenance records of CollabMap, an online crowdsourcing mapping application, we demonstrated an accuracy level of over 95% for the trust classification of data generated by the crowd therein.
2012
Richardson, Darren P.; Costanza, Enrico; Ramchurn, Sarvapali D.
Evaluating semi-automatic annotation of domestic energy consumption as a memory aid Proceedings Article
In: UbiComp '12 Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, pp. 613–614, 2012.
@inproceedings{eps349083,
title = {Evaluating semi-automatic annotation of domestic energy consumption as a memory aid},
author = {Darren P. Richardson and Enrico Costanza and Sarvapali D. Ramchurn},
url = {http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/349083/},
year = {2012},
date = {2012-01-01},
booktitle = {UbiComp '12 Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Conference on Ubiquitous Computing},
pages = {613--614},
abstract = {Frequent feedback about energy consumption can help conservation, one of the current global challenges. Such feedback is most helpful if users can relate it to their own day-to-day activities. In earlier work we showed that manual annotation of domestic energy consumption logs aids users to make such connection and discover patterns they were not aware of. In this poster we report how we augmented manual annotation with machine learning classification techniques. We propose the design of a lab study to evaluate the system, extending methods used to evaluate context aware memory aids, and we present the results of a pilot with 5 participants.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
Frequent feedback about energy consumption can help conservation, one of the current global challenges. Such feedback is most helpful if users can relate it to their own day-to-day activities. In earlier work we showed that manual annotation of domestic energy consumption logs aids users to make such connection and discover patterns they were not aware of. In this poster we report how we augmented manual annotation with machine learning classification techniques. We propose the design of a lab study to evaluate the system, extending methods used to evaluate context aware memory aids, and we present the results of a pilot with 5 participants.
Costanza, Enrico; Ramchurn, Sarvapali D.; Jennings, Nicholas R.
Understanding domestic energy consumption through interactive visualisation: a field study Proceedings Article
In: UbiComp '12. Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, pp. 216–225, 2012.
@inproceedings{eps338804,
title = {Understanding domestic energy consumption through interactive visualisation: a field study},
author = {Enrico Costanza and Sarvapali D. Ramchurn and Nicholas R. Jennings},
url = {http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/338804/},
year = {2012},
date = {2012-01-01},
booktitle = {UbiComp '12. Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Conference on Ubiquitous Computing},
pages = {216--225},
abstract = {Motivated by the need to better manage energy demand in the home, in this paper we advocate the integration into Ubicomp systems of interactive energy consumption visualisations, that allow users to engage with and understand their consumption data, relating it to concrete activities in their life. To this end, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of FigureEnergy, a novel interactive visualisation that allows users to annotate and manipulate a graphical representation of their own electricity consumption data, and therefore make sense of their past energy usage and understand when, how, and to what end, some amount of energy was used. To validate our design, we deployed FigureEnergy ?in the wild? ? 12 participants installed meters in their homes and used the system for a period of two weeks. The results suggest that the annotation approach is successful overall: by engaging with the data users started to relate energy consumption to activities rather than just to appliances. Moreover, they were able to discover that some appliances consume more than they expected, despite having had prior experience of using other electricity displays.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inproceedings}
}
Motivated by the need to better manage energy demand in the home, in this paper we advocate the integration into Ubicomp systems of interactive energy consumption visualisations, that allow users to engage with and understand their consumption data, relating it to concrete activities in their life. To this end, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of FigureEnergy, a novel interactive visualisation that allows users to annotate and manipulate a graphical representation of their own electricity consumption data, and therefore make sense of their past energy usage and understand when, how, and to what end, some amount of energy was used. To validate our design, we deployed FigureEnergy ?in the wild? ? 12 participants installed meters in their homes and used the system for a period of two weeks. The results suggest that the annotation approach is successful overall: by engaging with the data users started to relate energy consumption to activities rather than just to appliances. Moreover, they were able to discover that some appliances consume more than they expected, despite having had prior experience of using other electricity displays.
