PhD project This project is part of a larger research initiative on Socially Intelligent Systems including three PhD student projects and a postdoc project.
The aim of the research project is to develop socially intelligent software agents and intelligent user interfaces for person-adapted digital coaching.
The fundamental challenge lies in how intelligent autonomous agents may collaborate with humans in decision making tasks to achieve goals, and in making prioritizations among potentially conflicting goals, needs, motivations, preferences and choices of actions, e.g. in medical situations where healthcare professionals diagnose or select treatment methods. This is also highly important in situations where a person aims to change unhealthy behaviour, or needs to take action in order to reduce risk in work situations.
The project spans from fundamental theory development to validation in real-world applications. The fundamental development includes a complementary set of novel tools to be utilised by a cognitive companion for adaptation and collaboration purposes:
(1) dynamic multi-purpose and transparent motivational models that include emotional parameters and handle uncertainty;
(2) interactive and potential tangible interface methods for capturing changes in user models, relating to motivation, goals, emotions, motives and activity;
(3) purposefully designed user interfaces that efficiently mediate language-based and non-verbal dialogues with different purposes, and their relations in multi-purpose dialogues;
(4) transparent, interactive methods for coordination, cooperation and negotiation. This is followed by a validation study of the approach in real-world use cases.
