Smart Homes: a user perspective

Advances in intelligent systems and computing, 2018

The increasing availability of low-cost smart devices is bringing them to be used more and more in the smart home. However, the development of a smart home environment requires to take into account several aspects. First of all, designers must consider the end user (namely the person that actually uses the smart home), and not only the technology, at the center of any intervention. Another important aspect is the interaction between the smart home and the appliances that are already deployed in the same smart environment. Moreover, most of smart home solutions are static and do not allow end users to customize them according to their real needs and preferences. Finally, not all end users may possess the necessary knowledge and skills to customize a smart home, but someone else, such as an adult child or a caregiver, may be called on to carry out this task for them. In this paper, we analyze all these aspects that can influence the development and evolution of a smart home. We then propose a model supporting developers and software engineers to deploy and evaluate a smart home solution that adopts end-user development techniques. It is based on the International Classification of Functioning scale, which is used to characterize the person that is mainly going to live in the smart home and define a solution suitable to his/her needs.

Although electronic devices permeate the home and offer unsurpassed power and features, many impediments still exist to realizing the concept of the smart-home: configuration complexity, minimal device interoperability, difficulty of use, lack of personalization, and no integration with sensors for awareness and adaptation. We define four tenets of smart-home environment: Zero-configuration, Universality, Multiuser optimality, and Adaptability (ZUMA), and describe a platform based on a set of clean abstractions for users, content, and devices. The platform enables configuration and organization of content and networked heterogeneous devices in a smart-home environment. We validate the platform with a prototype implementation and analyze its flexibility and infrastructure requirements. 1 *The ZUMA project is funded by the Gigascale Systems Research Center www.gigascale.org

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2015

Smart homes are more and more popular since they are regarded as synonyms of an ideal and friendly environment. Novel aspects like context awareness and pro-activity are fundamental requirements for development of such systems. Smart scenarios enable switching devices in a desired way when a certain user activity considered as a trigger involves a system activity. Some smart scenarios are proposed. Context modeling and reasoning for smart homes is widely considered. A software architecture including web services is introduced and discussed.

2002

2007 4th IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference, 2007

The convergence of smart field devices and business services stands to profoundly change the way we interact with our environment. However, implementing and maintaining home-control applications is still far from easy. This paper discusses how service-oriented concepts can facilitate the development of home-control applications. Moreover we present an open architecture to implement these applications. A prototype of service platform for home-control is presented to illustrate the approach and its benefits.

2nd IET International Conference on Intelligent Environments (IE 06), 2006

A wide range of disconnected communication networks is emerging in the home. Each has different functions and implementation architectures. The user experience as well as the overall functionality would be vastly enhanced if these networks could collaborate in a seamless fashion. Collaboration is challenging because it requires disparate devices and components to interoperate in a user friendly, scalable and upgradeable fashion. We conjecture that such cooperation might be most efficiently assured using a supporting infrastructure. The Universal Contents Router (UCR) is introduced as an infrastructural component. The UCR moves the burden of connectivity away from the end devices to the system core. The paper spells out ZUMA, or functions that a UCR should support, discusses UCR architecture and presents a first-order prototype. 1 INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATION A number of independent communication networks are emerging in the residential space. Personal electronics and multimedia devices are the most noticeable. However, other devices, such as appliances, are now also communication enabled. The evolution of these networks is outlined below. Voice, one of the earliest home communication systems, developed from a single line to a cluster of cordless devices connected to a central "base station". Cellular phones, with different manufacturers, user interfaces, and a distinct set of functions, operate in parallel. Further, data communication has evolved from a single computer with low speed Internet access to a local area network that interconnects numerous desktops and laptops. Recently, high-speed connections, such as DSL, have become commonplace. In addition, wireless technologies are used to add extra mobility in the home. They are used to extend the LAN (WiFi) or to connect wireless peripheral devices to PC's (via Bluetooth). Communication infrastructures are also being developed for the home automation and monitoring spaces. Automated air conditioning and light control systems have the potential to control peak power consumption, and increase energy efficiency [13]. These systems use proprietary commercial communication networks (e.g. Lon-Works and BagNET). Manufacturers are also outfitting white products (laundry machines, refrigerators, etc.) with communication capabilities. Moreover, the house may have a fire alarm, security and/or a surveillance system. These are connected to a dispatch center and may have several camera feeds that need display devices (or can use the in-house TV circuit).

Journal of Systems and Software, 2018

Designing tools that allow end users to easily control and manage a smart home is a critical issue that researchers in Ambient Intelligence and Internet of Things have to address. Because of the variety of available solutions, with their advantages and limitations, it is not straightforward to understand which are the requirements that must be satisfied to effectively support end users. This paper aims to contribute to this topic through a systematic and rigorous activity based on two main pillars of the empirical research in software engineering: i) a literature review addressing design and evaluation of tools for smart home control oriented to end users, and ii) an experimental study in which three tools, that emerged from the literature review as the most suitable and widespread, were compared in order to identify the interaction mechanisms that end users appreciate most. On the basis of the obtained results, a set of design implications that may drive the development of future tools for smart home control and management are presented.

This paper discusses a novel architecture of intelligent user services that address the domain of networked home environments. The work described in this paper represents the central achievements of the first 1.5 years in the work package on intelligent user services within the EU-IST funded research project Amigo. The discussed service architecture consists of five distinct services that address both user-and system oriented issues in Ambient Intelligence (AmI) home environments.

A smart home is being an important part of research due to its impact on the life of many people, who decide to try this partially known concept of building and controlling their houses. In this paper we present a little different approach to the implementation of a smart home structure and its methods in real environment. As a part of the work we specify main requirements on the architectural design, which should be considered in final solution. Our research is focused primarily on the use of open standards and tools. This approach became popular because it provides an alternative view in comparison to commercial ones, where mostly proprietary and publicly unknown protocols are used. According to this, three theoretical architectures are proposed and presented with their pros and cons. In the paper we concentrate mainly on the usage of SIP protocol and issues related to the communication between a remote user and a smart home. We are proposing two logical communication models. Each model describes the type of used SIP messages and their message flows. In addition, we consider financial aspects of simple and illustrative smart home solution, which as well pose issues to end users. Our solution offers implementation with minimal operational costs and high facility control of the smart home. The paper also includes a survey of potentially usable protocols for smart homes and the list of software (SW) and hardware (HW) components, which have been used to build a testing environment.

2009 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 2009

This paper introduces MyHome, a framework of smart home by which household information is all at a finger tip. Through adopting Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) and Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi) technologies, MyHome offers reliable automatic operations, fault tolerant and configurable home automation, high extensibility and large scalability. In its design, MyHome system is composed of a residential gateway MyServer and Internet accessible GUI MyIcon and MyMobile. MyServer is used to provide services regarding home security, inventory tracking, facility management, GPS location recording and family care. Inherently an interactive and multitasking system driven by peripherals connected through wireless sensor networks, the overall MyServer architecture is designed with six core service modules operating on a MOM. Each of these modules is designed as an OSGi bundles and is implemented by a programming template utilizing event publish/subscribe messaging mechanism. To facilitate program demonstration, simulator and scenario editor are also developed. A successful implementation of the proposed MyServer is also demonstrated in an emulated home environment where peripherals are connected through ZigBee wireless sensor network with data integrated into a database. With these clearly defined service modules and pertinent infrastructure to integrate household peripherals, this paper presents a practical approach to the implementation of a smart home.