JENNIFER PATTISON TUOHY
Are our homes getting any smarter? Tech journalist Jennifer peers into the future to see when our homes might start making life easier.
A machine that does the jobs we don’t want – that’s what was promised to us by the sciencefiction of the last century. Unfortunately, good high-tech help is hard to find – but that’s about to change. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy reveals how our homes are about to start looking after us, and not the other way around
Most new gadgets get the ‘smart’ moniker slapped on the side of the box, but are we getting any closer to a truly smart home? “People don’t want a smarter home, they want a better home,” says Jamie Siminoff, founder of one of the smart home’s most recognisable brands, the Ring video doorbell. Siminoff invented the gadget to see who was at his front door when he was working in his garage.
To date, the smart home has been most successful when it presents a simple solution to a tricky problem and when it makes something just, well, better.
A smart thermostat that remembers to turn the heat down when you go out; a connected lock you can unlock remotely to let your nan in when you’re running late; a robotic vacuum cleaner to do the floors when you can’t be bothered… These are all top inventions, but is that really the future of our homes? Can’t they be any smarter?
Yes, they can.
Over the next decade, smart connected technology in our homes will transition from being a novelty and nice-to-have to a necessity.
The most profound improvements will come from the ways in which this smart tech can free up our money, energy, and most importantly our time. In other words, our homes will start taking care of us all.
Ten years ago, there were no video doorbells, no Amazon Alexa or Apple Siri voice assistants, and the Nest Learning Thermostat was still a good three months out from being unleashed on an unsuspecting public. The smart home was still just something for the uber rich or those who really liked to clap their hands – even the iPhone was still a toddler.
In the ensuing decade, innovation has proceeded at a breakneck pace, and our homes are moving from analogue to digital in what feels like the blink of an eye.
Today, you can no longer buy a ‘dumb TV’ and the question “Should we put a Wi-Fi chip in that?” appears to only have one answer.
As the great Internet of Things comes online, what are the key technologies that will shape our homes over the next decade? We talked to leading experts and innovators in the field to discover just what our homes are going to be capable of in the year 2030. Find out what they say over the following pages.
AMBIENT COMPUTING WILL MAKE YOUR HOME DO YOUR CHORES
“Alexa, turn on BBC Radio 4.” “Google, play Paranoid Android.” “Siri, what’s the weather like?” If our virtual assistants were real, they’d be sick of our bossy demands by now, but unfortunately, they can’t read our minds. But what if they could? Not literally of course, but what if they could anticipate our every need to become a bit less Alexa and a bit more Alfred (or Jarvis, or Jeeves. Other imaginary butlers are available for this joke).
What if our virtual assistants could learn to anticipate that we like the radio on in the morning, but not at the weekend or not on Thursday when we head to the gym early? That’s the promise of ambient computing. A combination of artificial intelligence and its subset, machine learning, ambient computing is a key technology in the evolution of the smart home.
It’s the point where a computer no longer needs direct input from you and instead it relies on your interactions with your surroundings to determine what to do next. In its simplest form, ambient computing is a technology that’s always available, but you never know is there. When you leave your house in the morning, your AI-powered home turns off the heating, shuts off Radio 4, arms the alarm system, and starts the robot vacuum. It takes away the responsibility of these chores from you and puts them onto your home.
“The concept of ambient computing is our north star for all of our devices and services connected to Alexa,” says David Shearer, vice president of smart home at Amazon. “We want to increase Alexa’s utility and shift the cognitive burden for complex tasks from the customer to Alexa.”
Amazon’s vision for the smart home goes beyond using voice commands to control devices to understanding what state the home and its devices should be in and then adjusting them according to what the user wants, says Shearer.
This may be a step too far for some, posits Daniel Knight, chief technology officer of Hiro, a UK-based insurance company focused on the value of smart home devices in protecting your home from disaster.
“The smart home is, and will continue to be, about convenient, informed control rather than just giving over to this artificial brain that’s going to do everything for you,” he says. “But there are isolated examples of AI that I see being able to effectively learn your preferences and really be game changers in your home.”
The smart fridge is one such application. Long the butt of many jokes about the Internet of Things, an artificially intelligent fridge that can automatically create an inventory your food,
“MACHINE LEARNING HAS TRANSFORMATIVE POTENTIAL WHEN IT COMES TO SENSING PATTERNS AND AUTOMATION’’
order supplies you’re running low on, and plan your meals for the week based on you and your family’s nutritional needs will be commonplace by 2030.
“Planning meals and shopping is huge time suck,” says Knight. “An appliance that uses cameras and/or weight-sensing shelves combined with a sophisticated enough AI is entirely capable of this type of interaction in the next decade.” The technology is already here, he says, it’s just waiting on improvements in the sensory inputs to help the AI interact with the right data.
However, the big challenge with machine learning is user trust.
“Machine learning has an enormous transformative potential when it comes to sensing patterns and automation,” says Tony Gjerlufsen, head of technology at SPACE10, a research and design lab funded by IKEA to devise solutions to some of the major shifts expected to affect people and the planet. “[But] machine learning requires data and in the context of homes, much of that is considered private and intimate. It’s ultimately up to the companies to prove themselves as sincere and dependable and that takes time. In the end, it’s all down to trust.”
Whether we give ourselves over to our smart homes in exchange for the convenience of having everything done for us, or if we decide to settle for more control and slightly less benefit is a conundrum that will likely play out over the next 10 years.
“I see the purpose of a smart home to act as a kind of assistant,” says Georgina McDonald, lead design producer at SPACE10. “I would want the home to know me well enough to assist me positively. Turn on the vacuum if I forgot to clean or turn off the stove.” But she warns of the dangers in relying on technology. “The fear for me is that the smart home makes our intuitions dull, as someone is there constantly picking up after you or fixing your mistakes.”
SMART ENERGY WILL MAKE YOUR HOME A CLEANER, GREENER MACHINE
“Smart homes have the potential to automate, save money and save carbon,” says Brian Horne, a consultant at the Energy Saving Trust. “At the moment, some so-called smart systems are just remote controls.” In the very near future, however, your smart, connected home could become a crucial cog in the wheel that powers the green energy revolution.
British homes are one of the biggest contributors to the UK’s carbon footprint, responsible for 25 per cent of the nation’s CO2 emissions. To help us reach net zero by 2050, a dramatic shift is needed. And it could all start with a Wi-Fi chip in your tumble dryer.
While smart thermostats can save some energy by turning your heating down if your home is poorly insulated, it’s a token gesture at best.
The real benefit of the smart home comes from energy management. “Some of the biggest innovations in the home will be around helping people manage and reduce their energy use,” says Geraldine de Boisse, vice president of innovation at Bulb, the UK’s largest green energy supplier.
The key technology here is ‘demand side response’, or perhaps a better term is ‘smart energy’. This is the act of using energy intelligently, employing technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to allow the appliances in our home to communicate with the energy grid and help shift and reduce energy use.
A quarter of the average energy bill comes from the costs of transporting energy and balancing supply and demand. “If any large consuming appliances in your home can intelligently run when carbon intensity is low, or when the grid has excess, that’s a really useful thing,” says Knight, who worked on Samsung’s plan for connecting its appliances to the energy supply system. “It doesn’t help us generate more energy, it doesn’t help us use less energy, but it helps us smooth out those peaks and troughs that make energy management so costly.”
As we move toward net zero, electricity use is going to increase. More of us will have electric vehicles and use electric heat pumps for heating to
“IF ANY LARGE CONSUMING APPLIANCES IN YOUR HOME CAN INTELLIGENTLY RUN WHEN CARBON INTENSITY IS LOW, OR WHEN THE GRID HAS EXCESS, THAT’S A REALLY USEFUL THING”
reduce our dependency on oil and gas. A recent white paper from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy lays out how smart, connected appliances that can talk to the energy grid, combined with a decentralised, interconnected energy supply system, will not only help power the country in a cleaner way but will save you money, too.
Some of this technology is already here. Most new household appliances have Wi-Fi chips, or at least could come online with minor modifications. And as smart meters roll out across the country, people are starting to see how much energy their homes use, and can take advantage of energy tariffs that offer cheaper energy when demand is low.
Some tech is waiting for wider adoption. Electric vehicles are poised to be a key technology in how smart homes use energy. A single car can provide gigawatts of battery storage just sitting in your driveway. This is energy you can store for when you need it or export it to the grid and get paid for it. “This so-called ‘vehicle-to-grid technology’ is something we’re working on for the future,” says de Boisse.
Once the systems are in place, the smart home will play a key role in a decentralised energy grid. “The next step is for people to give some control to their supplier and allow them to control the flow of power to their devices like electric vehicles, heat pumps and ventilation systems to avoid peak periods, and charge or operate when it’s cheapest and greenest,” says de Boisse.
All of this will again require a substantial amount of trust, a common theme when it comes to the smart home of the future.
“If we do get fully connected homes with appliances that talk to each other, that raises the question of do we want it to be fully automatic?” says Horne. “Is our data secure, and how far do we go? Ultimately, that should be a decision for the householder – smart homes should be about taking control of our lives, not giving it up.”