Supporting users in controlling automations in intelligent environments through conversational agents

The integration of sensors and intelligent devices in everyday environments is changing the way people interact with common objects. The need to provide non-expert users with an easy and efficient way to customize the behaviour of these devices according to their preferences and habits is crucial. This paper presents the work carried out by the author in the development of a conversational agent to empower the end-user in controlling intelligent environments, allowing for easy and fast communication with sensors, actuators, and smart objects using trigger-action customisation rules. The paper provides an overview of the state of the art in research and commercial solutions for conversational agents and presents some preliminary results of the research. Then, the ongoing work on a Systematic Literature Review and the migration to open-source solutions are presented. Finally, an overview of future work is given.