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Navigation assistance systems (NASs) aim to help visually impaired people (VIPs) navigate unfamiliar environments. Most of today's NASs support VIPs via turn-by-turn navigation, but a growing body of work highlights the importance of…
Many AI systems focus solely on providing solutions or explaining outcomes. However, complex tasks like research and strategic thinking often benefit from a more comprehensive approach to augmenting the thinking process rather than…
Mobile agents that can leverage help from humans can potentially accomplish more complex tasks than they could entirely on their own. We develop "Help, Anna!" (HANNA), an interactive photo-realistic simulator in which an agent fulfills…
Conversational recommender systems aim to interactively support online users in their information search and decision-making processes in an intuitive way. With the latest advances in voice-controlled devices, natural language processing,…
The increasing reliance on digital information necessitates advancements in conversational search systems, particularly in terms of information transparency. While prior research in conversational information-seeking has concentrated on…
Automated scientific discovery promises to accelerate progress across scientific domains. However, developing and evaluating an AI agent's capacity for end-to-end scientific reasoning is challenging as running real-world experiments is…
Driven by ongoing improvements in machine learning, chatbots have increasingly grown from experimental interface prototypes to reliable and robust tools for process automation. Building on these advances, companies have identified various…
Demographic growth and rise in the average age of the population is increasing the demand for the elderly assistance. Health care oriented ambient intelligence technologies are fundamental to support elderly peoples' autonomy. In this…
Designing Conversational AI systems to support older adults requires more than usability and reliability, it also necessitates robustness in handling conversational breakdowns. In this study, we investigate how older adults navigate and…
This paper outlines the challenges and opportunities of research on conversational agents with children and young people across four countries, exploring the ways AI technologies can support children's well-being across social and cultural…
People with special needs like blind and visually impaired (BVI) people can particularly benefit from using voice assistants providing spoken information input and output in everyday life. However, it is crucial to understand their needs…
Determining how voice assistants should broker consent to share data with third party software has proven to be a complex problem. Devices often require users to switch to companion smartphone apps in order to navigate permissions menus for…
Virtual Assistant technology is rapidly proliferating to improve productivity in a variety of tasks. While several virtual assistants for everyday tasks are well-known (e.g., Siri, Cortana, Alexa), assistants for specialty tasks such as…
We have developed a conversational recommendation system designed to help users navigate through a set of limited options to find the best choice. Unlike many internet scale systems that use a singular set of search terms and return a…
Older adults are using voice-based technologies in a variety of different contexts and are uniquely positioned to benefit from smart speakers' handsfree, voice-based interface. In order to better understand the ways in which older adults…
A goal shared by artificial intelligence and information retrieval is to create an oracle, that is, a machine that can answer our questions, no matter how difficult they are. A more limited, but still instrumental, version of this oracle is…
Information-seeking dialogues span a wide range of questions, from simple factoid to complex queries that require exploring multiple facets and viewpoints. When performing exploratory searches in unfamiliar domains, users may lack…
Virtual assistants have the potential to play an important role in helping users achieves different tasks. However, these systems face challenges in their real-world usability, characterized by inefficiency and struggles in grasping user…
Our work addresses the challenges older adults face with commercial Voice Assistants (VAs), notably in conversation breakdowns and error handling. Traditional methods of collecting user experiences-usage logs and post-hoc interviews-do not…
Virtual globes have progressed from little-known technology to broadly popular software in a mere few years. We investigated this phenomenon through a survey and discovered that, while virtual globes are en vogue, their use is restricted to…