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NetButler: Voice-Based Edge/Cloud Virtual Assistant for Managing Home Gateways
Ref: CISTER-TR-200705       Publication Date: 2 to 4, Dec, 2020

Abstract:
Virtual assistants (VA) are becoming a standard tool in many aspects of our daily lives requiring technical support. Voice-based VAs in particular, such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, have become common in smartphones and domestic IoT devices (e.g., Google Home, Amazon Echo), replying to user inquiries (e.g., weather forecast) or performing simple services (e.g., play music) among other things. Through dedicated interfaces, VAs can be used or extended to support new services, and one particular area typically requiring assistance is the management of home networks. Activating specic features or troubleshooting connectivity problems may be dicult or impossible for users that are not tech-savvy. In this paper we introduce NetButler, a voicebased virtual assistant tailored to support the management of home networks, that leverages a third-party cloud-based voice service (Alexa) and dedicated routines at the home gateway. Oered functionalities are the setup of a guest network and identication of the source of connectivity problems, by quantifying the number and signal strength of the devices in the local network and performing a throughput test to an external server. We evaluate the user experience with the NetButler system with 8 test users. We report an average of up to 15s to set up a guest network and between 30 to 60s to troubleshoot various problems, and we nd overall user satisfaction to be 3.75 in a 1-to-5 scale by means of a after-session questionnaire.

Diogo Martins

,

Bruno Parreira

,

Pedro Miguel Santos

,

Sergio Figueiredo