Adaptive user modelling in intelligent telephone and email assistants

With the burgeoning complexity and capabilities of modern information appliances and services, user modelling is becoming an increasingly important research area. Simple user profiles already personalise many software products and consumer goods such as digital TV recorders and mobile phones. A user model should be easy to initialise, and it must adapt in the light of interaction with the user. In many cases, a large amount of training data is needed to generate a user model, and adaptation is equivalent to retraining the system. This paper briefly outlines the user modelling problem and work done at BTexact on an intelligent personal assistant (IPA) which incorporates a user profile. We go on to describe FILUM, a more flexible method of user modelling, and show its application to the telephone assistant and email assistant components of the IPA, with tests to illustrate its usefulness.     

From fuzzy databases to an intelligent manual using fril

This paper describes an Intelligent Manual written in Fril which can act as an interface to documentation, software, and the conceptual framework of a technical study. The Intelligent Manual can also act as an assistant to an engineer involved in a technical investigation drawing on previous work. Methods of dealing with the uncertainties in data and inference are described, and a demonstration system is outlined covering a report on the performance assessment of a hazardous waste repository. The methods used in the Intelligent Manual can be applied to any technical documentation.