By Lydia Leavitt
We’ve all heard about the connected home: a home that knows exactly how much energy it’s using, how much milk is left in the fridge and when to turn off the lights or turn up the heat based on your personal preferences. But the future of the connected home is so much more than a smart TV or thermostat -- it’s a living, breathing, dynamic and affordable home. And it will be the norm.
Beyond plug-and-play technologies like Nest and smart TVs, smart homes will be homes that are manufactured smarter, made out of smarter materials and can truly learn based on its homeowner’s preferences, what’s happening outside and more importantly, in the community.
Prefab Homes Will Come Fully Connected
Take for example Proto Homes, a California-based company aiming to “productize” the connected home. By ordering or moving into a Proto home, you get a prefabricated dwelling that’s fully networked already -- for around $200 per square foot. Using Clear Connected RF Technology Network, the home is fully controllable via mobile devices, from security and lighting to music, alarms and temperature.
“Developing a consumer product as an assembly of smart components, rather than from a primitive traditional method, has inherent benefits for the consumer. The house adapts to new features, components [and] devices as the owner adds them,” Rodney Cudmore, project director at Proto Homes, said.
“Architects and engineers will design and build these prefabricated homes based on international standards and norms, similar to how we design and build cars. This innovative capability will allow for building entire villages in a few days,” said Sotirios Kotsopoulos, research associate at MIT’s Mobile Experience Laboratory.
Similar to Proto Homes, MIT’s Mobile Experience Lab is creating new technology and materials designed with creating a new way for us to build and connect homes in mind.
Jumping From Connected Elements to Full City Connectivity
Of course, being able to control your home via a mobile device is the first step towards a truly “connected” home, and it’s something already evident in the marketplace. But beyond mobile control both in-home and remotely, homes are being outfitted with smarter technology that can respond to outside stimulus and actively automate things like climate control and energy.
For example, the Proto Homes technology allows the home to access meter energy data and analyze it in real-time. “We see a time when connected homes can collect data streams that become tools to assist in managing city resources. Water, traffic, electricity, waste, as well as human resources, can all be managed more efficiently,” Proto Homes CEO Frank Vafaee said.
“The future of connected homes is really about a connected community; a connectivity, which is beyond consumption of data by owners or controlling their lighting remotely,” he added.
Predictive Technology And Home Automation
Imagine a TV that turns itself on right before your favorite show starts, or based on your past habits, predictively mutes itself when the commercials begin. Imagine a refrigerator that sends you a friendly reminder to pick up more orange juice when you’re on your way home from work (which it knows you are right now, based on your GPS location data). The home of the future is one that knows your behavior, and responds to your routine accordingly.
Beyond just learning the homeowner’s preferences and routine, smart homes will be able to self-manage things like energy consumption and climate control. Taking into account the homeowner’s long-term energy goals as well as things like outside weather and city resources based on the smart grid, this future home will actively optimize its activity in real-time.
Smarter Materials
Not only smarter, these homes of the future will be built with smarter materials. Currently in development, MIT’s Mobile Experience Lab is building a new type of window that uses two layers of polymer dispersed liquid crystal to let in light and heat when desirable and similarly, block it. Used in tandem with the structure’s autonomous climate control, this façade will be able to shift to maximize comfort inside the home. Similarly, the prototype blends data from sensors both inside and outside of the home with historical weather information to determine the most comfortable combination of heat and air conditioning while also minimizing carbon dioxide emissions.
MIT’s Kotsopoulos said that the Mobile Experience Lab is also experimenting with new interactive building materials, autonomous interior environmental control, climate and even reconfigurable micro-apartments and furniture.
Smarter materials can also mean building houses out of more eco-friendly building materials. Take for example, the “Living Building Challenge,” an organization dedicated to maintaining a set of environmental standards for new homes. These non-toxic and net zero emission homes are popping up across the nation as prototypes, with a long-term goal of mass-producing them. Winner of the 2012 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, the organization is supporting the building structures to new environmental standards with energy consumption and environmental impact all in mind.
As the future of the connected home becomes clearer, the projected $71 billion industry will undoubtedly only grow and become more commonplace. With a movement towards prefabrication and modularity, as well as autonomous control, energy saving and environmental impact, the home of the future will undoubtedly be so much more than Internet-enabled, wired dwellings – they will truly be “smart,” in every sense of the word.
Lydia Leavitt is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist focused on emerging technology, trends and startups. She has experience writing for Engadget, TechCrunch and The Next Web.
