Making Existing Homes Smart Lauri Kainulainen University of Tampere Department of Computer Sciences Computer Science M.Sc. thesis Supervisor: Roope Raisamo October 2007 University of Tampere Department of Computer Sciences Computer Science Lauri Kainulainen: Making Existing Homes Smart M.Sc. thesis, 93 pages, 7 index and appendix pages October 2007 Abstract Smart homes have been a central theme in ubiquitous computing and intelligent environments. Various research projects and adventurous companies have tried to tackle the challenge, but still smart homes are nowhere to be seen on the consumer market. So far the research has focused on new housing and laboratory prototypes instead of our current homes, and without much consideration for rented households. In my thesis I will focus on the new challenges brought by these two factors, take a look into the current state of smart home research, summarize the wishes made by potential users and write about the various themes in smart home design. I will conclude by proposing a simple design that has the potential of lifting our current homes and the homes of the future to the realm of intelligent environments. Key words and terms: smart homes, intelligent environments, ubiquitous computing, software architectures Table of Contents Abstract...................................................................................................................2 1 Introduction...........................................................................................................6 2 History and Motivation.........................................................................................8 2.1 Defining the Smart Home.............................................................................8 2.2 Smart Homes and Ubiquitous Computing....................................................9 2.3 Smart Homes in the Light of the Actor-Network Theory...........................11 2.4 The Structure of Buildings..........................................................................12 2.5 Rented Apartments......................................................................................13 3 Designing Smart Homes.....................................................................................15 3.1 AMIGO Research on Smart Home Requirements......................................15 3.1.1 AMIGO Results...................................................................................15 3.2 Other Requirements Related Research .......................................................16 3.3 The Roles of a Smart Home System...........................................................17 3.3.1 The Media-centric and Private Nature of Smart Home Systems.........18 3.3.2 Domestic Communications and Organization.....................................19 3.3.3 Assistance for the Elderly and Disabled..............................................21 3.4 Design Methodology...................................................................................21 3.4.1 A New Way to Design Intelligent Environments................................23 3.5 Releasing a Smart Home System................................................................24 4 Smart Home Projects...........................................................................................27 4.1 The MavHome Project................................................................................27 4.2 EasyLiving from Microsoft.........................................................................28 4.3 Aladdin Home Networking Project.............................................................29 4.4 Einstein, Pluto and LinuxMCE...................................................................30 5 Smart Home Networking....................................................................................32 5.1 Technology..................................................................................................32 5.1.1 X10.......................................................................................................33 5.1.2 Bluetooth..............................................................................................34 5.1.3 IEEE 802.11.........................................................................................35 5.1.4 ZigBee..................................................................................................35 5.1.5 RFID.....................................................................................................36 5.1.6 Summary of the Technologies.............................................................38 5.2 Network Topologies....................................................................................39 5.2.1 Star Topology ......................................................................................39 5.2.2 Bus Topology.......................................................................................40 5.2.3 Mesh Topology....................................................................................40 5.2.4 Hybrid Topology..................................................................................40 5.3 A/V Networks and Computer Networks.....................................................41 5.4 Towards the Ideal Solution.........................................................................41 6 Smart Home User Interfaces...............................................................................43 6.1 Trend One: Divide and Conquer.................................................................43 6.2 Trend Two: Multimodality..........................................................................44 6.3 Trend Three: Variety of Interfaces..............................................................44 6.4 Trend Four: Weak Proactivity.....................................................................45 6.5 Trend Five: Customizability.......................................................................46 6.6 Categorization of Different User Interfaces................................................46 6.6.1 The Ubiquitous User Interface.............................................................47 6.6.2 Tangible User Interfaces......................................................................49 6.7 User Roles and Device Permissions............................................................50 6.8 Dynamic Interfaces.....................................................................................52 6.9 The Placement of User Interfaces...............................................................53 6.10 3rd Party Development.............................................................................54 7 Smart Home Components and Architecture.......................................................55 7.1 Central Components....................................................................................56 7.2 What is Context...........................................................................................58 7.2.1 Quality of Context................................................................................59 7.2.2 Context Fusion.....................................................................................61 7.2.3 Environment Modeling........................................................................62 7.3 Logging.......................................................................................................64 7.4 The Agents..................................................................................................64 7.4.1 Coordination and Control.....................................................................65 7.4.2 The User Interface Agent.....................................................................66 7.4.3 Examples of Useful Agents .................................................................68 7.5 The Last Issue of Communication..............................................................69 8 Artificial Intelligence..........................................................................................71 8.1 MavHome and Active-LeZi........................................................................71 8.2 EasyLiving and the Geometric Model........................................................72 8.3 Shortfalls of Both Approaches....................................................................72 8.4 Goal-based Approach..................................................................................73 8.5 Possible Technical Solutions.......................................................................74 8.6 All Three Approaches Side-by-Side...........................................................78 8.7 Discussion on the Artificial Intelligence.....................................................80 9 The Design .........................................................................................................82 9.1 Hardware Layout.........................................................................................82 9.2 Software Architecture.................................................................................83 9.2.1 User Interfaces.....................................................................................85 9.2.2 Trusted Agents via Public Key Authentication....................................85 9.3 User Involvement........................................................................................86 10 Conclusion.........................................................................................................88 6 1 Introduction Smart