It’s 6
A.M., and the alarm clock is buzzing earlier than usual. It’s not a
malfunction: the smart clock scanned your schedule and adjusted because you’ve
got that big presentation first thing in the morning. Your shower automatically
turns on and warms to your preferred 103°F. The electric car is ready to go,
charged by the solar panels or wind turbine on your roof. When you get home
later, there’s an unexpected package waiting, delivered by drone. You open it
to find cold medicine. Turns out, health sensors embedded in your bathroom
detected signs of an impending illness and placed an order automatically. Good
thing you already knocked that presentation out of the park.
That,
at least, is the utopian version of the smart home that exists 10 years out.
Swedish research firm Berg Insight says 63 million American homes will qualify
as “smart” by 2022, with everything from Internet-connected light bulbs to
cameras that let us spy on our pets from the office (there were nearly 130
million homes in the U.S. in total in 2018). But a decade from now, experts
say, we’ll move from turning the lights on and off with our voices to total
immersion in the Internet of Things (IoT). Thanks to advancements in artificial
intelligence, the smartest homes will be able to truly learn about their owners
or occupants, eventually anticipating their needs. Developments in robotics
will give us machines that offer a helping hand with cleaning, cooking and
more. New sensors will keep tabs on our well-being. Central to all of this will
be the data that smart homes collect, analyze and act upon, helping to turn the
houses of the future from a mere collection of gadgets and accessories into
truly “smart” homes.
All
the automated attentiveness will come with a high price tag: consumers will
spend $123 billion on IoT gear by 2021, according to advisory firm ABI
Research, a number that’s likely to rise thereafter. Aside from
Internet-connected televisions, manufacturers are putting their R&D and
marketing budgets behind home-monitoring and security gadgets–they will have
22.6% of the smart-home market share by 2023, estimates research firm IDC, with
smart speakers and lighting equipment not far behind, at 15.4% and 11.8% respectively.
There are already at least 7 billion connected IoT devices, according to
market-research company IoT Analytics. But as smart-home technology becomes
easier to use and its benefits become more clear, the industry is poised to
take off. “Sustained growth is expected to continue … as consumers adopt
multiple devices within their homes and as global availability of products and
services increases,” according to IDC.
Of
course, as our homes learn more about us, keeping them secure will become all
the more important. Every device that’s connected to the Internet is a
potential target for hackers. When we’re talking about devices that can unlock
our homes from afar, peer into our living rooms using cameras, and collect our
most sensitive and personal data, cybersecurity will become all the more vital.
Any kind of massive breach that turns off consumers, says Daniel Cooley, chief
strategy officer at electronics-component manufacturer Silicon Labs, could be
catastrophic for the industry. “I call it a mass-extinction event for the
Internet of Things,” he says.
A
range of technological developments will drive smart-home technology well
beyond what’s available on store shelves today. Innovations in artificial
intelligence, for example, stand to upend almost everything in our lives,
including our homes. You might already be using some kind of AI-powered
voice-assistant gadget to get the latest news or weather forecast every morning.
But in the smart home of the future, those AI platforms could serve as the
brain for entire homes, learning about residents and coordinating and
automating all of their various smart gadgets. IoT company Crestron, for
example, is working on software that tracks a person’s habits, like which music
they want to hear in the morning or which lights they want to be on at a
certain time of day. Then, once it gets the hang of a user’s preferences, it
automatically plays just the right playlists or dims the lights before bedtime.
“That’s really the next evolutionary step in true automation,” says John
Clancy, head of Crestron’s residential business.
Robots,
too, will have a role to play in the smart home of the future. Smart vacuum
cleaners like iRobot’s Roomba are already picking up after us, while products
like the Aibo, a robotic dog for children, show how they might help keep us
company like a pet. As for the future? Robotic-furniture company Ori Living is
working with Ikea on pieces that change based on your needs, getting the bed
out of the way when you need a desk, or hiding your closet when it’s
dinnertime. Design firm Design3 recently showed off a smart-home robot concept,
CARL. The fabric-covered bot is meant to slowly roll around your home,
activating its retractable cameras and sensors to detect intruders, notify you
of any harmful emissions or keep an eye on your pet. And computer-graphics
company Nvidia is working on a smart robotic arm that can act as its owner’s
personal sous chef, doing everything from slicing and dicing veggies to helping
with cleanup; it could be particularly useful for busy parents or disabled
users. If such a device went into production, cameras and sensors could help
prevent it from accidentally injuring an innocent bystander who’s just on the
way to the fridge for a quick snack before dinnertime.
Health
applications will drive at least some of the smart-home growth over the next
decade. Cameras and sensors embedded in refrigerators will suggest more
nutritious alternatives if people are reaching for the sugary sodas a little
too frequently. Similar technology in medicine cabinets will check if residents
have taken their prescriptions. And sensors will even show up in toilets to
check for signs of any potential health conditions by scanning human waste
before it’s flushed. Bathroom-fixture company Toto has experimented with
urine-sampling toilets, while one company has filed patents for devices
including a mirror that’s meant to monitor users’ health just by analyzing
their skin. Homes will have health sensors of their own, too, that check for
issues like water damage, pest infestation and so on, alerting owners to any
potential problems before they become far costlier to manage.
All
this learning and scanning that the smart home of the future will be doing may
understandably raise privacy concerns. Indeed, some smart-home devices have
already been targeted by hackers, whether to access the data they hold or to
use them as tools in larger cybersecurity schemes. In 2016, hackers took over
hundreds of thousands of insecure IoT devices, then used them to send bogus
Internet traffic to target websites in hopes of crashing them; the incident
temporarily crippled Internet connections throughout parts of North America and
Europe. Government regulation is in the works too. A bill put forth by Virginia
Senator Mark Warner in March would push the government to set up minimum
security requirements for smart devices used by federal agencies; such
requirements could eventually become standard for the industry at large.
You’re
more likely than not to end up in a connected home one day, whether you mean to
or not. Architect Michael Gardner, founder of construction firm Luxus Design
Build, says homes are increasingly being built “smart” from the ground up.
“It’s such an integral part of the home that we’re designing it from the
beginning, where beforehand technology was always an afterthought,” he says.
Ultimately, experts say, people will come to see smart-home technology as
essential as electricity, refrigeration or air-conditioning. Smart-home tech,
and the data it collects, will “be like plumbing,” says Cooley, from
electronics-component manufacturer Silicon Labs. “You’ll rely on it."
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