Smart Home Technologies

CSE 4392 / CSE 5392 Spring 2006

Manfred Huber huber@omega.uta.edu

Intelligent Environments

Environments that use technology to assist inhabitants by automating task components Aimed at improving inhabitants experience and task performance NOT: large number of electronic gadgets

Objectives of Intelligent Environments

Improve Inhabitant experience:

Optimize inhabitant productivity Minimize operating costs Improve comfort Simplify use of technologies Ensure security Enhance accessibility

Requirements for Intelligent Environments

Acquire and apply knowledge about tasks that occur in the environment Automate task components that improve efficiency of inhabitant tasks Provide unobtrusive human-machine interfaces Adapt to changes in the environment and of the inhabitants Ensure privacy of the inhabitants

Examples of Intelligent Environments

Intelligent Workspaces

Automatic note taking Simplified information sharing Optimized climate controls Automated supply ordering

Examples of Intelligent Environments

Intelligent Vehicles

Location-aware navigation systems

Task-specific navigation
Traffic-awareness

Examples of Intelligent Environments

Smart Homes

Optimized climate and light controls Item tracking and automated ordering for food and general use items Automated alarm schedules to match inhabitants preferences

Control of media systems

Existing Projects

Academic

Georgia Tech Aware Home MIT Intelligent Room Stanford Interactive Workspaces UC Boulder Adaptive House UTA MavHome Smart Home TCU Smart Home

Existing Projects

Industry

General Electric Smart Home Microsoft Easy Living Philips Vision of the Future Verizon Connected Family

Georgia Tech Aware Home

Perceive and assist occupants Aging in Place (crisis support) Ubiquitous sensing

Scene understanding, object recognition Multi-camera, multi-person tracking Context-based activity

Smart floor http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fce/ahri/

MIT Intelligent Room

Support natural interaction with room

Speech-based information access Gesture recognition

Movement tracking
Context-aware automation

http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/aire/

Stanford Interactive Workspaces

Large wall and tabletop interactive displays Scientific visualization Mobile computing devices Computer-supported cooperative work Distributed system architectures http://iwork.stanford.edu/

UC Boulder Adaptive House

Infer patterns and predict actions Machine learning for automation HVAC, water heater, lighting control Goals:
Reduce occupant manual control Improve energy efficiency http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~mozer/house/

UTA MavHome Smart Home

Learning of inhabitant patterns Learn optimal automation strategies Goals

Maximize comfort and productivity Minimize cost Ensure security

http://ranger.uta.edu/smarthome/

TCU Smart Home

Inhabitant Prediction Smart entertainment control Smart kitchen recipe services Household staff modeling
http://personal.tcu.edu/~lburnell/crescent/cr escent.html

General Electric Smart Home

Appliance control interfaces Climate control Energy management devices Lighting control Security systems Consumer Electronics Bus (CEBus) http://www.geindustrial.com/cwc/home

Microsoft Easy Living

Camera-based person detection and tracking Geometric world modeling for context Multimodal sensing

Biometric authentication
Distributed systems Ubiquitous computing

http://research.microsoft.com/easyliving/

Philips Vision of the Future

Less obtrusive technology Technology devices

Interactive wallpaper Control wands Intelligent garbage can

http://www.design.philips.com/vof

Verizon Connected Family

Remote monitoring of the home Entry authentication

Integrated, pervasive communications

Centralized data management

Challenges in Intelligent Environments

Home design and sensor layout Communication and pervasive computing Natural interfaces Management of available data Capture and interpretation of tasks Decision making for automation Robotic control Large-scale integration Inhabitant privacy

Sensors

How many and what type? How to interpret sensor data? How to interface with sensors? Are sensors active or passive?

Communications

What medium and protocol? How to handle bandwidth limitations?

What structure does the communication

infrastructure have?

Data Management

How to store all the data? What data is stored?

How is data distributed to the pervasive

computing infrastructure?

Prediction & Decision Making

How to extract and represent inhabitants task patterns? What patterns should be maintained? How to determine the actions to automate? To what level should tasks be automated?

Automation

How are the tasks automated? How are actuators controlled? How is safety ensured?

System Integration

How to achieve extensibility? Should the system be centralized or decentralized? How to integrate existing technology components? How to make integration and interface intuitive?

Privacy

How to ensure that inhabitant

information remains private?

What data should be gathered?

How should personal data be maintained and used?

Course Topics

Sensing
Networking Databases Prediction and Data Mining Decision Making Robotics Privacy Issues

Example Scenario

Smart kitchen item tracking

Sense and monitor items in the kitchen Predict usage patterns Automatically generate shopping lists based on usage patterns

Automatically retrieve replacement items