Advanced user assistance for setting up a home theater

Abstract

In many situations of daily life, such as in educational, work-related, or social contexts, one can observe an increasing demand for intelligent assistance systems. In this chapter, we show how such assistance can be provided in a wide range of application scenarios—based on the integration of user-centered planning with advanced dialog and interaction management capabilities. Our approach is demonstrated by a system that assists a user in the task of setting up a complex home theater. The theater consists of several hi-fi devices that need to be connected with each other using the available cables and adapters. In particular for technically inexperienced users, the task is quite challenging due to the high number of different ports of the devices and because the used cables might not be known to the user. Support is provided by presenting a detailed sequence of instructions that solves the task.