A device senses audio, imagery, and/or other stimulus from a user's environment, and acts autonomously to fulfill inferred or anticipated user desires. In one aspect, the detailed technology concerns device-based cognition of a scene viewed by the device's camera. Tasks, which can be selected with the aid of context, are allocated increased or decreased resources based on data comprising (a) user input data indicating express or implied encouragement or discouragement of the task and/or (b) a detection state metric, representing a quantified likelihood that a goal sought by the task will be reached. A great number of other features and arrangements are also detailed.
Intuitive computing methods and systems