This is our view our view of the historical, current and future stages of smart home evolution. It based on many years of living in our own smart home, which we have designed and built from scratch. This is important to us because our vision of what the smart home will become is a significant driving force behind our strategy. Our vision influences the design and technologies used to implement our smart home. It also helps us avoid products, services and technology that might initially look good, but are not really a step in the right direction.
Simple automation via timers and mechanical actuators. These include things like PIR activated security lights, programmable timers used on central heating systems, etc. It can also include mechanical actuators such as ceiling vents.
Basic remote control of hardware via IR remotes and other wireless remote control technologies.
Simple apps to enable remote control of devices and views of sensor data. Typically these types of devices are aimed at a specific problem such as heating control, access control, etc. Most of the current consumer smart home market is based on app controlled devices.
More complex control scenarios (multiple devices from one event) using scenes. These may also be scheduled and include adaptive schedules based on local context, where schedules are postponed or extended based on other contextual data.
This is about the current level of the Apple Home service and devices like the Amazon Echo. Whilst they exhibit some characteristics of artificial narrow intelligence [9], they do little more than enable voice control requests within the context of the smart home. These services are really offering little more than remote control via voice.
The contextual smart home has all the information and context required to make intelligent decisions, something we call whole home context. The smart home is now adapting its behaviour based on a complete view of its context and surroundings and is able to use models for things like rooms/zones (and the relationships between them), occupancy and presence, location, people, etc.
The smart home is no longer a request/response service but has inherent feedback paths and is using context (day/night, in/out/away, occupied/unoccupied, etc.) to change its behaviour as a whole and at a room or zone level.
The smart home just works around its users with no explicit user interaction. It can predict and adapt its behaviour, making intelligent decisions based on whole home context and sensor data. Most of the smart home's features have now become a zero-touch user experience.
The smart home is no longer purely responsive to requests and can understand events and proactively take action to handle them. Assisted living is an inherent capability for all users.
The smart home is capable of learning as whole from previous events and interactions, changing its future behaviour to better meet its user's needs. This is well beyond the simple learning algorithms currently used in single features or services (e.g. smart thermostats).
Users can have a natural language dialogue (via text and voice) with the smart home to query and control everything within it. It has some understanding of immediate and relevant external influences but cannot understand generic requests outside of the scope of the smart home. This is the level at which our own smart home is currently operating. Conversation context is retained, to enable a conversation thread. Your smart home now has its own identity.
Some devices and services such as the Amazon Echo and Siri may appear to be operating at this level but they are really just voice control [5] devices when considered within the context of the smart home.
The smart home artificially intelligence is extended outside of the scope of the smart home to enable generic questions and requests to be fulfilled. Context is retained to enable an advanced conversation thread, with pronouns used to reference previous objects and concepts mentioned.
The smart home is sentient and aware system that can look after itself and its occupants, handling any and all requests made upon it, except those that required physical interaction with passive objects within it. The smart home is now a specialist form of an intelligent robot. It may also control some basic robots to do specific functions, such as vacuuming floors, handling deliveries, etc.
The smart home now has fully mobile robotic assistants that match its level of intelligence and can physically interact with any object within the home and navigate all around it. They seamlessly interact with all it features. Your smart home is now providing intelligent assisted living for all its occupants, regardless of their mental and physical capabilities.
