Domotics

Home Intelligence

While brushing her teeth, Pascale glances at the weather forecast and the latest market prices, displayed in a corner of the bathroom mirror. Meanwhile, Charlie, who's still in bed and in a holiday mood, taps the “Caribbean Atmosphere” icon on his Web tablet. Immediately, the bedroom lighting is subdued, a video of a Caribbean beach appears on the walls, a fragrance diffuser fills the room with the scent of orchids, guavas, and magnolias, and the languorous melody of a beguine drifts from the speaker system. Downstairs, Arthur and Louise, 10 and 11 years old, respectively, are having a game of chess and arguing loudly over who's winning. But there's no need for Charlie to go down and see what's going on. The smart home system is programmed to decipher the noise made by the children and warn the parents if there's a sudden change in tone. Oblivious to all this, Charlie's grandmother, 105-year-old Georgette, is upstairs, where an articulate automated arm adjusts her pillow so that she'll be comfortable while watching a TV program about the latest breakthrough in scientific string theory.

This could be an everyday scene in the life of a typical family one morning in the year 2020–as well as a quick glimpse, at the frontiers of the possible, of the range of “intelligent” services that “smart homes”¹ may be able to provide in the near future. Such automated houses will be designed to obey–and foresee–our every whim, facilitate our leisure activities, free us from housework, and watch over our health, comfort, and safety, while at the same time helping us conserve energy. “In the 1980s, automated homes never really gained momentum because the technology just wasn't good enough, which meant that what was on offer was often ridiculously expensive, as well as being unsuited to real needs,” explains Éric Campo, from Laas in Toulouse.² “Consumers saw such services as exorbitantly priced gadgets aimed at technology enthusiasts.” However, today, the services proposed are far more attractive and target consumer needs much more accurately, while the technology has improved and prices have fallen. The time is ripe for new products to appear on the market and appeal to the general public. One sector determined to take advantage of the opportunity is the health industry. Since there are more and more elderly people in the developed world, “continuous monitoring of people with delicate health, away from hospitals and in good safety conditions, is going to be essential. Solutions to this need have emerged from advances in microelectronics, microprocessor systems, and communication and information technologies,” Campo points out. He goes on to describe the Prosafe project developed by Laas: A network of presence-sensing devices designed to learn the behavior of elderly people in their home and to provide informations about any abnormal state of activity. “The system,” he notes, “could be supplemented by pressure sensors or accelerometers which detect a fall or loss of consciousness, magnetic contact sensors on doors and windows, humidity, temperature, and light sensors, and so on.” Embedded in walls, ceilings, and floors, the sensors are linked via a highly tailored communications network to a computer connected to a medical center. Similarly, Laas's Ergdom project, jointly run with the R&D department at the French national electricity provider EDF, intelligently manages a person's comfort while at the same time curbing energy consumption by regulating room temperature. “This system is also based on low-cost presence-sensing devices placed at strategic spots,” Campo explains.

 

in-home healthcare

Another futuristic marvel is a remote monitoring system based on physiological sensors for measuring blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rhythm, blood-sugar level, motor activity, etc. They would fit into a small case attached to the wrist. The biological parameters would be sent to a processing unit, compared with a customized model, then analyzed for diagnosis by a monitoring center which could alert medical staff if the slightest abnormality were detected.  

“To avoid embarrassment, these sensors could be made more unobtrusive by inserting them inside clothes,” explains Norbert Noury, researcher at the TIMC-Imag.³ “An American team at MIT in Boston has even developed a sort of ring which measures peripheral arterial pressure continuously. Such instruments will also be available for people in good health who may wish, or need, to permanently know how well their 'machine' is running. Or they could be used in companies in order to identify situations of distress, reckless risk-taking, and so on.” These tools could be on the market in less than ten years.

Perhaps even more mind-boggling is a development referred to as “functional assistance.” There is little doubt that in the near future many homes will be equipped with intelligent walkers capable of locating the hands of a person with impaired mobility in order to help them stand and walk. But additionally, “minirobots equipped with a mobile arm and a camera will help bedridden people by bringing them things they need from their immediate environment,” says Étienne Colle, director of LSC.⁴ “They could even be controlled at a distance by a remote monitoring center, via Internet.” If a sensor detects a fall, a doctor will take control of the robot, direct it to the patient in difficulty, make an initial diagnosis of the problem and call emergency services, all of which will save precious time. 

 

 

responsive environment

Other high-tech robot helpers will clean windows after a storm, bring the shopping in from the car to the fridge and do the ironing. And then, of course, there's the ultimate fantasy: humanoid robots. “To a certain extent, they will be capable of  making decisions. They will be able to share their owners' emotions and express their own,” explains François Pierrot, from Lirmm,⁵ one of the men behind the Joint Robotics Laboratory,⁶ together with Jean-Paul Laumond, from Laas. “It's an utterly complex matter, but within a decade, these systems, which are still in their infancy, will have progressed enormously. Will people agree to use them? Certainly, the human/humanoid relationship will have to be studied in depth.”

Nonetheless, whatever their reaction to robots, humans will no doubt appreciate that, once tomorrow's smart home has memorized the behavior patterns of its inhabitants, it will regulate the central heating according to the weather forecast, switch it off when occupants leave and back on when they return, lock all entrances should an unknown person approach, detect the slightest water or gas leak and alert the concerned party by email or SMS, call the repairer if a household appliance needs maintenance, display a low-calorie menu on the refrigerator screen if the bathroom scales have detected that someone has put on too much weight. “All these sensors will be able to interpret and analyze situations and use the input to respond by 'making' decisions,” Campo emphasizes. “They'll monitor CO₂ content and open windows to air out a space, or warn parents if a child strays too near a hotplate, for example. They will constantly communicate with each other using wireless connections.”

And according to Christophe Cerisara, researcher at Loria,⁷ the important thing is that “this 'ambient intelligence' software environment should be as transparent as possible, in order to avoid distracting people and giving them the impression that they're not in control.” The system, enhanced with webcams, will monitor the home incognito, without bothering anyone, collect as much “contextual” information as possible in order to locate speakers by analyzing acoustic signals (“What room are they in?”), identify the topic of discussion (“Who's asking a question, and to whom?”/“Who's answering and with what kind of intonation?”), interpret the conversation (“What / who are they talking about?”), and react on the basis of this information. The watchwords are attentiveness, accuracy, unobtrusiveness. “The whole philosophy of 'implicit interaction' is based on the principle that users don't have to ask the system to help them, but rather that the system makes use of all the features of its environment to anticipate the needs of the home's occupants,” says Cerisara.

The times they are a-changing. But with a bit of luck, Charlie's grandma will be around to see the smart home in action.

 

Philippe Testard-Vaillant