Smart home: Devices, applications and their potential benefits and challenges

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019. This study surveys a range of devices and applications based on information and computer technologies to automate their control houses and related activities which together form and are called Smart Home systems. The aim of this research is to explore examples of such devices and applications used to provide smart home technologies and their benefits and challenges to users. Interviews were administered to 18 users of Smart Home technologies. The participants were selected randomly by purposive sampling on the basis of having and using a smart home technology, and with the goal of ascertaining which type of the technologies are being used, their modus operandi, and their benefits and any implementation issues. This was complemented by exploring the systems through watching and observing online videos of people using them. The findings reveal a varied number of Smart Home systems being used for automating household operations. The primary reasons for using them are their efficiency and simplicity of operation in spite of being challenged by their high costs. In relative order, the greatest perceived benefits of a smart home system for the participants were convenience, energy savings, the security it can provide, and simplicity of control. The greatest challenges were cost, design aspects, technical challenges and lacking in meeting special user needs

Overcoming barriers and increasing independence: service robots for elderly and disabled people

This paper discusses the potential for service robots to overcome barriers and increase independence of elderly and disabled people. It includes a brief overview of the existing uses of service robots by disabled and elderly people and advances in technology which will make new uses possible and provides suggestions for some of these new applications. The paper also considers the design and other conditions to be met for user acceptance. It also discusses the complementarity of assistive service robots and personal assistance and considers the types of applications and users for which service robots are and are not suitable

The Audio Implicit Association Test: Human Preferences and Implicit Associations Concerning Machine Voices

Auditory human-machine interfaces are becoming ubiquitous. Interactive voice response systems, navigation systems, socially assistive robots, and smart houses are just a few examples of technologies that support auditory interactions. This study uses the implicit association test (IAT) to measure participants’ associative strength between human and machine voices and pleasant or unpleasant attributes. To accomplish this, the IAT needed to be validated using audio stimuli and the associative strength of secondary features of stimuli, that is, features other than their semantic content. Six IAT experiments were conducted to test the ability of the IAT to measure association strengths of the target concepts of audio stimuli and an attribute dimension in addition to target concepts of secondary features and an attribute dimension. Results support the effectiveness of an audio IAT, an IAT for secondary features, and an IAT that combines audio with secondary features. Results also show that participants had a stronger association between human voices and pleasant attributes than machine voices and pleasant attributes

Networking and Communication in Smart Home for People with Disabilities

Abstract. People with disabilities need several assistive technical aids to increase their autonomy and perform daily living tasks. This paper describes the role of networking and communication in the smart home concept which allows people with disabilities and elderly people to retain a certain level of independence within their daily environment, such as at home, work, school, outside and so on. The purpose of our research activity is to explore the difficulties by determining the most suitable approach to federate the different communication protocols available indoor and outdoor environments. In this paper we are presenting our main concept in the design of the smart home architecture. We also describe our approach to design an open software environment adapted to people with disabilities. This approach is based on the service discovery protocol UPnP (Universal Plan and Play) to discover devices in smart home. It is based also on wireless technologies and protocols (Wifi, Bluetooth, etc.) to enhance mobility and dependency. Some solutions are adapted to favor integration of new modules and devices, and to improve the communication between the different layers of our software architecture.