Making Homes Smarter
by Pranav Nair
The recent decade has seen a shift from conversations like “Mom, turn off the lights!” to instead “Alexa, turn off the lights!”.
In an era of an information revolution, the world has witnessed many leaps in various domains of computer science along with several newly emerging and competitive technologies too. Fuelling this fire of forwardness is an embracing market demanding and looking forward to new developments not seen before. One such field often overlooked, yet highly sought after is the concept of ‘Smart Homes’. But before diving deep, what exactly is referred to by a ‘smart home’, and how smart it really is?
At the heart of it, ‘smart home’ refers to a convenient home setup wherein devices and appliances operated over an internet network are interconnected, and could thereby be easily used quickly as well as remotely via a single device (often mobiles, tablets). Much learned members of the technical community coin the concept as ‘Domotics’ too. But that’s not the end of the road. With advancements in the fields of Machine and Deep Learning, this Internet of Things (IoT) domain can now learn from the user’s usage pattern and make desirable operations with the home appliances by itself too (for example dim lights at 10 pm, ring alarm at 7 am, or even brew coffee at 5 pm, etc). Sounds interesting? Let’s see more facts.
A glance at the origins of ‘Smart Homes’ dates back to the invention of remote control systems by Nikola Tesla in 1875, but it was not until 1966 that a modern-day intuition of a smart home device was actually introduced to the world. In 1966, Echo IV, the first automated smart system was developed, which allowed consumers to create shopping lists, control the temperature of the home, and turn appliances on/off. Since then, there has been no looking back. New frontiers unlocked have allowed people to interact more efficiently as well as remotely with their homes. Factions of society like elderly citizens or people with disabilities are now able to attain smart assistance more easily. Further, the advent of ‘smart homes’ has enabled a higher level of convenient security for homes too. As a result, several spheres of a household have been automated, and tremendous research is under progress to explore more such viable options too. A few common applications of ‘smart home’ devices today include:
- Smart speakers with AI-enabled voice assistant to manage other devices and appliances, alongside several other personal tasks
- Smart TVs to access on-demand audio, video media content, and applications over the internet.
- Smart cameras and security systems that alert homeowners even while they are away, and if needed contact emergencies too.
- Smart kitchen appliances like an automated dishwasher, or a coffee maker.
- And many more…
Today, one in three urban households has a smart speaker like Amazon Echo or Google Nest. The global home automation market is evaluated to be nearly $84.5 billion and is just at the feet of an exponential rise. These numbers concretely establish and convinces the impact ‘smart homes’ have had on our lives, and also their potential in the future.
Despite these developments, the cons of ‘smart homes’ are not void, and as an individual surrounded by a technically advancing society, these downsides definitely do affect us.
Home automation systems that are smart rely on user behavior data to perform smart operations. These devices being part of the internet have raised global concerns on data leakage and privacy issues. One pitfall to another, wireless ‘smart home’ IoT devices could be reverse-engineered by hackers to perform infamous activities like thefts too (for example switching off all smart lights, and disabling security systems before entering a burglary). An obvious solution is to ensure encryption and safety. But how many levels of encryption really guarantees safety from hackers? Another option is to have your ‘smart home’ devices hardwired rather than relying on the internet. However, building such a setup would cost a user thousands of dollars.
Another important and unaddressed issue is the lack of uniformity or protocols in ‘smart home’ devices. A consequence is that the UX of ‘smart home’ devices varies from company to company, and that the user requires to getting accustomed whenever a new ‘smart home’ device is purchased. While it may be intriguing for a tech-savvy user, the problem is dire when the same is expected of a senior citizen, making them run away from the concept of ‘smart homes’.
These two faces of a newly emerging technology raise a much heated debate amongst citizens on how to strike the right balance while using ‘smart homes’ in our daily lives. It remains necessary to judiciously weigh the costs and benefits. Yet it was rightly quoted by Steve Jobs, “Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday”.
