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Technology
There are devices that enable you to unlock your front door for a friendly visitor with your voice or from the other side of the world with your smartphone. Others let you open windows to take advantage of pleasant breezes and close them again when the weather changes. Still others enable you to turn the lights down and enjoy a movie without leaving the comfort of your couch.
As advanced as they might sound, these conveniences are nothing new. And while they’re undoubtedly useful, they essentially only provide you with new ways to exercise the same control you’ve always had over your home. Whether you turn a key or push a button on your smartphone, it’s still you controlling the lock on your door. Easy and convenient, certainly. But smart? Not so much – you still do all the thinking.
Machines that learn
A smart home attempts to bridge that gap and take care of the thinking for you.
It recognises the friendly face at the door and decides whether to let them in, no button presses required. It monitors weather conditions, air ow, humidity, even CO2 concentrations and decides for itself when to open and close your windows. Not only is the temperature just right when you arrive home from work, your smart car calls ahead that tra c was terrible and you’re a little tired tonight.
Cue soothing music, take-out options and a warm bath the moment you step in the door. After you retire, your smart home monitors your breathing, heart rate and sleep patterns to keep you as well rested as possible, then chooses the perfect moment to wake you. Hot co ee waits for you in the kitchen.
While this degree of interconnectivity and sci- smarts is still just an aspiration, Professor Guesgen believes it is very close to becoming a reality.
Of course, if humankind ever develops true arti cial intelligence, it’s unlikely to be content to sit at home and open and close your
windows all day. The trick, he says, is to give the illusion of intelligence. With care- fully crafted control software and sensor algorithms, a smart home control system can be programmed to learn, react and adapt to its environment and your changing needs. It can appear to think for itself.
Control and connectivity
‘The controller is usually just a computing system, such as a locally installed device with a microprocessor or a process in the cloud acting through the internet. The control software is where the smart aspect of a smart home comes in,’ Professor Guesgen says.
‘It’s able to receive input from all the home’s sensors, process the information in clever ways and take sensible actions by communi- cating with actuators installed around the home.’
A very simple example might be when the weather unexpectedly turns cold. An exterior temperature sensor detects and reports the change, the control system notices that the temperature has crossed a lower threshold and activates heaters in occupied rooms to maintain a comfortable temperature. Internal sensors report back when the heaters reach their target temperature.
Devices that talk to each other
‘I envision that homes will become much smarter as time, machine learning and technology progress. Almost every home is connected to the internet these days, so in essence, they are all already connected,’ says Professor Guesgen.
‘The key is greater standardisation of the underlying communica- tion and control systems. Devices can then automatically communi- cate with each other and the control system and seamlessly coordinate their activities in the home by themselves.
‘We are not far away from a world where consumers will be able to build their own smart home simply by buying o -the-shelf compo- nents that work together right out of the box.’
‘We are not far away from a world where consumers will be able to build their own smart home simply by buying o -the-shelf components that work together right out of the box.’
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FEATURE SECTION