Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
A kind of acting technology regards the home automation, commonly called
“domotics”, with devices to manage the house and automate supplies. Enhancement in
home automation systems, including embedded and interconnected computational
devices able to sense, elaborate, communicate, and act, will lead to ambient intelligent
and smart environments. Pervasive robotics for assistance, rehabilitation and prosthetic
will be integrated in smart environments and will increase the range of possible
physical interaction between the smart environment and the user.
5.3.1.
Domotics and “smart home” appliances and objects
A home automation system (or domotic system) is characterized by technologies that
make available innovative solutions and functionalities to manage the house and the
well-being of users. The main basic contents of domotic regard automation, security,
comfort, communication, energy. Basic automations are often related to the possibility
to physically move and activate some components of the house (doors, blinds, gates,
windows, etc). Security is related to control of domestic implants (water, gas, doors,
intrusions, etc.) and to care of persons (alarms, alerts, activity monitoring, surveillance,
etc.). Comfort is related to management of systems for lights, air condition, heating, etc.
Communication instead regards systems that are able to interface with or permit user in
order to receive or send information (phones, interphone, acoustical and visual alerts,
etc). Finally energy is related to the intelligent, sustainable and ecological use of energy
resources at home. Although most of these solutions are already available on the
market, however more efforts are needed in research and development to pursue
sterling, integrated, effective, useful and mature technologies for Ambient Assisted
Living applications.
Over a decade, some research groups have worked on developing new and
innovative technologies for home automation and some projects in the matter of that
have been funded,
Researchers at the House-n research group at the MIT Department of Architecture
are investigating how the home and its related technologies, products and services
should develop to better meet the opportunities and challenges of the future. Using a
strongly interdisciplinary perspective that integrates backgrounds of computer science,
user- interface design and usability, architecture, mechanical engineering, psychology
and materials science, the House-n research team is aiming at creating design strategies
for more flexible environments that better meet occupants` physical and cognitive
needs by: 1) demonstrating a new type of building methodology that makes it possible
to embed technology within the infrastructure of environments and then easily change
and upgrade it; 2) providing an environment in which to study home life scientifically,
particularly the relationships between space and information; and 3) providing a means
for evaluating whether new types of pervasive computing interventions have a long-
term and meaningful impact on behaviour in the home (Intille, 2002) (Intille, 2005).
The Gator Tech Smart House (Helal, 2005) was defined as a programmable
pervasive space, specifically designed for disabled and older users, and as “an assistive
environment that can sense itself and its residents and enact mappings between the
physical world and remote monitoring and intervention services”. The concept of the
GatorTech Smart House is comprehensive, and it describes a pervasive distribution of
intelligence and sensing throughout the home environment. In order to allow such a
deployment of technology-based services, the GatorTech research group at the
University of Florida developed a generic reference middleware architecture,
