Collaborating with Focused and Unfocused Users under Imperfect Communication

A totally focused user always finishes the current task or subtask before moving on to another. Typical users, however, sometimes shift back and forth between incomplete tasks and do not always communicate before doing so. This behavior poses a problem for a software agent that uses plan recognition to support its collaboration with users. Our solution is a discourse interpretation algorithm which balances between asking too many questions about a userś intentions and sometimes being wrong about them. 8th International Conference on User Modelling, Sonthofen, Germany, July 2001 This work may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part for any commercial purpose. Permission to copy in whole or in part without payment of fee is granted for nonprofit educational and research purposes provided that all such whole or partial copies include the following: a notice that such copying is by permission of Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.; an acknowledgment of the authors and individual contributions to the work; and all applicable portions of the copyright notice. Copying, reproduction, or republishing for any other purpose shall require a license with payment of fee to Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright c ©Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc., 2000 201 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139