The Smart Home of the Future

If you ask homeowner policyholders if they have an inventory of the contents of their home, chances are that they will have a sense of what is valuable in the dwelling, but rarely do they have a complete list of all goods in the house. In the home of the “not too distant” future, the house itself will keep an inventory using some fascinating new technologies.

Scientists have developed methods to track home contents, right down to someone’s favorite socks, using special tags that will be attached to any item, including the food in the fridge.

The latest “smart home” technology, which IBM is prototyping, is the use of RF or “radio frequency” tags. IBM has developed RF stickers that have a chip emblazoned on them and can be attached to any item in the house, so that the house knows where those items are at all times. Imagine asking your house where the TV remote has gotten to?

The tags are not powered, but create a disruption in the radio waves being broadcast throughout the house much like a rock disturbs the flow of water in a river. A sensor can measure the disruption and extract 44 bits of information from it, enough to give the item a unique electronic address. If the smart home knows where an item is and what its unique address is, it can reference more information about the item by looking it up in a database.

In a more in-depth example, Bill Bodin, laboratory manager at the IBM Pervasive Computing Lab in Austin Texas, recently demonstrated the capability of RF technology using two “tagged” pill bottles. When the bottles came close to each other in the kitchen the house broadcast an alert informing that the two drugs would have a serious interaction if a person consumed them both.

This information was available on any capable device in the house. In the demonstration an alert was triggered on lab’s “screen fridge”, a high tech refrigerator that is not just a kitchen appliance, but a communications hub where family members can leave text, audio and video messages for each other.

The tags can also be sewn into garments so that a washing a machine would know what is being put in it and wash items according to specific instructions.

“It’s a very good idea,” says Rob Brucekner, Maytag’s director of business development. But, it is early days yet. “My understanding is they (the tags) are not cheap and robust enough yet. We have to align available technology and real consumer wants. They may say ‘Hey, that’s neat’, but would they pay more money for it? I don’t know.”

The UPC code, the printed symbol consisting of lines and numbers on many consumer goods, was developed by IBM, and the RF tag is the next logical step in this kind of inventory management system.

A tagging system similar to this concept already has a real world commercial application. The company WhereNet sells a system used to track inventories and equipment on a business’ premises with tags attached to equipment and antennas which listen for broadcasts from them. The system is currently being used to track vehicles at car factories. The same technology is also being offered by GE Medical Systems, who can build the system into hospital devices so that medical personnel know where key equipment is at all times.

Unlike IBM’s RF tag technology, the WhereNet tags have batteries, which last more than five years depending on how often the tag announces its location. The company also sees further uses for the technology, including in a community setting where the movements of children could be tracked via wristwatch devices, or pets tracked through devices in their collars.

Large appliances in the home would not need this kind of technology, because they would have built-in active transmitters allowing not only tracking, but also remote control usage by a homeowner, a service provider or even a machine that is designed to run a house.

Carrier Corporation, best known for its home climate control systems, is capitalizing on the idea with ComfortChoice, a thermostat that can be controlled via the Internet. The company is selling the device to the Long Island Power Authority, which is signing up customers for a power conservation program. Customers agree to let the utility remotely adjust their home’s temperature through the device between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m., when the utility wants to procure power savings. This results in a change of one or two degrees, with a maximum adjustment of six degrees.

The utility expects to save about one megawatt of power once the devices are in 5,000 homes. If 45,000 to 50,000 homes participate, it could result in five-megawatt savings or the equivalent of the output of a small power plant. It also translates into savings of up to 15% on a customer’s power bill.

This comes on the tail of another Carrier project, the MyAppliance.com air conditioner, now being sold in five European countries. The air conditioner, which can be controlled via a cellular phone, costs no more than a regular unit.

In Bodin’s lab, climate is only one facet of his “smart home” model that can be controlled. Most of the contents of the home, which has tear-away walls and floors, are network-enabled. Appliances can all “talk” electronically with each other via an Internet gateway, a cereal box-sized silicon brain that is the intermediary between the Internet and the house. The lights, blinds and heating and cooling systems in the house are also online.

In the lab the systems are accessed via a portable clipboard-sized wireless web pad, the wide-screen TV in the den, or the screen fridge in the kitchen. Anything with an interactive interface and a network connection could be used. Eventually, Bodin says, the home could be voice-controlled.

Next door to the den and the kitchen in the lab’s “smart home” is a garage with a mockup voice-controlled car. It too can be monitored through the smart home’s various interfaces. It is possible, for example, to check on the car’s fluids from the television. The vehicle can also be tracked through global positioning satellites.

This home of the “not so distant” future runs like a Web page. Each device has its own address and can be accessed by any connected device from within the home or even across the Web from outside the home. It could be operated on a computer at work or handheld device such as a PDA or cellular phone.

However, such a home would also be more vulnerable to intrusions. Just as an open window is an invitation to a thief, a network connection is also a security vulnerability.

“I’m not confident that (manufacturers) will come up with adequate security solutions,” says Chris Rouland, director of X-Force, a group of tech security experts at Internet Security Systems in Atlanta. “I see new technologies every day that are not secure.”

Vandals intent on real destruction could turn on ovens and cause fires or change thermostat settings to freeze a home in the winter resulting in burst pipes.

The key to protection of the home’s systems is much like the key to Internet security, a firewall, either through software installed on a computer or built into an Internet gateway. The firewall essentially “hides” all the connected devices in the home from outside hacking through the Internet.

“As people do more computing online they need a safety net. A firewall is there to protect them,” said Kevin Krempulec, enterprise sales manager for small medium business at Symantec Canada. He sees a day when a homeowner will need similar industrial strength protection for a home’s built-in network.

Experts also see the potential for a home to be monitored by a security firm that not only responds to a physical break-in, but also a “cyber break and enter”.

Ironically, a smart home system could also detect these hazards and either deploy countermeasures or alert emergency response authorities, and perhaps even the policyholder’s insurance broker.