Sensors and AI Impact on Home Automation (Maalik Kaptue - Group D)

Sensors and AI Impact on Home Automation

We currently live in a world where home automation is rapidly developing and becoming a common asset and commodity within the real estate market. The growing industry of home automation currently sits around $8.8 million USD, as many home builders were placing properties on the market integrated with connected devices. Those home builders are partnering with large conglomerates in the software and hardware manufacturing industries to place products in homes that feeds into this connected ecosystem. The ecosystem of automated devices is connecting homeowners to their amenities through sensors, hardware platforms and software. Hardware companies like Electric Imp are partnering with software business like Axeda and Xively who develop software platforms for this hardware. [2]

With the created ecosystem of connected devices within a household functioning, home residents will further be able to connect and adapt features within their home through AI ability and responsiveness of these devices, ultimately drawing a link between the user and its devices. This is being accomplished through virtual assistant devices, such as: Amazon’s Alexa and the Google Assistant among many newly-developing gadgets. Different universities across the country (Arizona State, Northeastern University, etc.) have begun testing the practicality of those virtual assistants by giving to their students and having them to students answer question about campus meal plans and school business hours among other things centered around the university’s functions. [1] Though the study of having students used these virtual assistant devices was built around universities learning what their students wanting in a university, this study could use to track the development and learning curve of these gadgets in seeing how these devices can adapt to the lifestyle of these student. For instance, with the continuous interaction between the student and the device, there could be learning of one’s daily routine and schedule. With that AI ability, this technology can be taken and applied to home automation where amenities are set and controlled through learned habits of homeowners.

In conclusion, this growing industry of home automation partnered with technology innovation in AI and sensor management can be built upon to accomplish a goal of energy savings, as homes are functioning independent of the users to monitor and adjust energy usage to save in utilities cost. [3] Traditionally, many thermostats are set and adjusted by homeowners, as changes to the heating and cooling demand of a home is reliant solely on a homeowner remembering to turn off the heating when they leave the house and no one is home. But moving forward, in the future, there will be integration of smarter HVAC ecosystem (similar to Nest thermostat) that monitors and adjust heating and cooling demands based on the learned habits of the users without their interference. This technology will further be able to analyze other climatic features inside and outside the home to better set the heating and cooling demands. The movement to home automation will bridge the gaps between user comfort and cost savings without the involvement of users.

REFERENCES

[1]  Ellis, Lindsey. Hey, Alexa, Should We Bring Virtual Assistants to Campus? These Colleges Gave Them a Shot. August 2, 2018. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Hey-Alexa-Should-We-Bring/244129?cid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=fca8c6a17b7943d696dd417c6c7d660f&elq=02622bf46f104a1d98af1a2355bb2f4b&elqaid=19988&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=9293

[2] Jenthani, Seema. The business of home automation is enabling the internet of things. December 21, 2013. https://gigaom.com/2013/12/21/the-business-of-home-automation-is-enabling-the-internet-of-things/

[3] Stine, Dan. Building Performance Analysis in Revit 2016 R2 with Autodesk Insight 360: AECbytes Tips and Tricks. November 20, 2015. http://www.aecbytes.com/tipsandtricks/2015/issue76-revit.html

COMMENTS

Hailey: I agree; it is crazy how we live in a world where sensors and other technologies are powered off of us. For example, you mentioned a smartwatch that runs on the heat generated from the body of the user. Also we are continuously feeding developers data and information in real time through database collection to aid them in creating technology that functions independently of human innovation.

Ren: I agree with how AI is changing the way further technology is being created and developed. You mentioned how engineers and designers from large tech companies want to make computers that function similar to the human brain. But ultimately, the role of AI will further develop to become the primary factor of software and hardware development, as it will aid engineers and designers work more efficiently and more accurately.

Blas: Introducing AI into the construction world is a challenge that is being tackled today. You have come from long eras in construction where the safety and human rights of workers on the sites have been compromised for the success of a project. Moving forward, I agree that AI will offer new technologies that implements different building techniques in project’s design and construction processes.