Trust and autonomy for regulating the users’ acceptance of IoT technologies

Abstract

 The success of IoT technologies is undeniable. They are entering more and more in our lives, carrying out increasingly complex tasks. However, there are still a few problems we need to face and solve. For instance, it is not given that the users will be prepared to afford all the automation that IoT devices will offer or that it will be compatible with the users’ cognitive attitudes and its actual and real goals. Within this work, we start analyzing which reasons undermine the acceptance of IoT systems and then we propose a possible solution, tanking into account not just the user-device interaction, but also how this affects the device-device interaction. Since the complexity of the tasks the user asks may require the cooperation of some devices to be realized, the regulation of this relationship represents a necessary step for this technology. The first contribution of this work is the level characterization of the autonomy a user can grant to an IoT device. The second contribution is a theoretical model to deal with users and to stimulate users’ acceptance, taking also into account a possible, collaborative organizational structure, to manage the creation of groups and the partners’ selection process.