Emotion-Aware Smart Home Automation Based on the eBICA Model

TL;DR

This paper presents an emotion-aware smart home automation framework based on the eBICA model, demonstrating its effectiveness in reducing anxiety and supporting personalized emotional responses in a simulated environment.

Contribution

It introduces a novel emotion-aware automation framework guided by eBICA, integrating appraisal, somatic responses, and behavior selection, with empirical validation.

Findings

Significant reduction in state anxiety after automation intervention

Personality traits influence relief levels from automation

Empirical evidence supports eBICA's effectiveness in smart homes

Abstract

Smart home automation that adapts to a user's emotional state can enhance psychological safety in daily living environments. This study proposes an emotion-aware automation framework guided by the emotional Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architecture (eBICA), which integrates appraisal, somatic responses, and behavior selection. We conducted a proof-of-concept experiment in a pseudo-smart-home environment, where participants were exposed to an anxiety-inducing event followed by a comfort-inducing automation. State anxiety (STAI-S) was measured throughout the task sequence. The results showed a significant reduction in STAI-S immediately after introducing the avoidance automation, demonstrating that emotion-based control can effectively promote psychological safety. Furthermore, an analysis of individual characteristics suggested that personality and anxiety-related traits modulate the degree of relief, indicating the potential for personalized emotion-adaptive automation. Overall, this study provides empirical evidence that eBICA-based emotional control can function effectively in smart home environments and offers a foundation for next-generation affective home automation systems.