Interoperability and Intuitive Controls for Smart Homes

Abstract

Too often, smart home technologies are seen as an innovative type of technology for expensive and upscale real estate and housing or for application in the domain of healthcare. There are three main goals for the application of smart home technologies. The first goal is to improve the level of comfort and ease of use of dwellings. The second goal is to improve the sense of safety and security inside and around a building. The third main goal is to use energy more efficiently. Despite the good intentions, the use of smart technologies at home does not automatically lead to achieving the three goals mentioned above. In addition, there are a number of requirements that need to be fulfilled in order to maximize the acceptance of such technologies by consumers. To date, the market of smart home technologies has, despite the growing number of companies and organization involved in this domain, not reached its stage of adulthood. Since the 1990s, many scenarios were laid out in which smart home technologies were portrayed as a promise for the future. Despite these positive scenarios, smart home technologies are still not daily business for many building services companies, advisers, and installers. Only when we can reach more uniformity in the domain of smart homes, we can expect a general growth of the market of smart homes. With the aging of society, there is an increasing need for more comfort and safety. But at present, there are simply too many standards, as well as producer-bound systems, which cannot, or hardly can, be combined or require the use of complicated and costly gateways. At this moment this is the most important obstacle.