It´s 3AM. You get up,still half-asleep, to go to the bathroom, and before you even find the light switch, a light shines the way. You didn´t press any buttons. You didn´t open any apps. You didn´t even have to say “Alexa, switch on the light” trying not to wake up the whole house. It just happened.
The digital home starts just there: when sensors, connected devices, automatation and artificial intelligence cease to be isolated technologies and start working together to adapt to people needs.
Because when we talk about domotic, its easy to think about blinds opening by themselves, connected home appliances, voice assistants or an app from which we can control almost everything. All that is very good, but I think the real interesting part starts when we don´t think on devices in an isolated way and we start thinking in what people that live on that house needs.
A house that knows what happens
We all have routines, even though we’ve probably never stopped to think about it. We wake up around the same hour, we go through the same rooms, we cook, we hang out, we return home or we just sit to see tv.
In a smart home, small sensors and devices can give information about several situations: if there is someone on a room, if a door is open, if there is smoke, if exists a water leak, what temperature has the house or how much energy we are consuming. Separately are simple data. The interesting occurs when we managed all that devices working together.
Imagine we are hanging out and we have left the windows open. Or that is beginning to be detected water in a place it shouldn´t be. Or that a person wakes up in the middle of the nigh and the house adadpts automatically the light to facilitate its movement. In these cases, technology is no longer something that we should manage constantly to transform it in something that helps us when we need. And that nuance changes a lot the things.
From automating a home to understanding what happens inside it
Home automation has been allowing us to automate tasks for many years. If A happens, makes B. If it gets dark, the light switches on. If temperature decrease, heating switches on. If smoke is detected, an alarm is generated.
We now have the opportunity to move toward somewhat more interesting systems: to combine information that proceed from different devices, analyse and using it to understand better the context. Here technologies such as artificial intelligence can have an important role. Not necessarily so that our home becomes some kind of HAL 9000 that makes decisions for us, but for something more practical: detect patterns, learn routines and identify when something it´s out of the ordinary. And this results specially interesting when we move the digital home to the health and wellbeing environment.
Technology to promote independent living
Let´s think, for example, on a old person that lives alone. Maybe the important thing isn´t know each time it opens the door or enters into a room. In fact, probably that isn´t interesting for anyone. The relevant thing could be detect that something has change. That determinate routines are developed in a different way. That there is a potentially dangerous situation. Or that is convenient offering help. The difference between both approximations is important: is not about keep an eye on someone, but rather to ensure that those around her can support her while respecting her autonomy—and, let’s not shy away from saying it—her privacy, as much as possible.
Digital Home Demonstration Center: Testing Technology in a Real Home
Talking about all this on papel is easy, other thing is entering on a home and testing it works.
With that objective has been created the Digital Home Demonstration Center, located in Villanubla and booster by the Diputación de Valladolid on the framework of the IBERUS SMART CDT project, which technological implementation, management and dinamization it´s been done by CARTIF. The space simulates a home with different recognised rooms (kitchen, living room, room or bathroom) in which the different technologies coexist inside the same environment.
Security, energy efficiency, well-being and health, communication, accessibility, automation, virtual assistants, and robotics are some of the use cases you can interact with at the center.
But personally, I think the most interesting thing about the demonstrator isn’t showing off a collection of devices; it’s being able to test what happens when we connect them to each other and put them in real-world situations.
Because developing technology inside a lab is one thing. Reaching being useful when someone enters the kitchen, in our room or in our living room is something very different. It has to be easy, feasebility. Different devices should be able to understan between them. And, above all, it has to solve a real need.
If to switch on a intelligent light we have to open the mobile, search for an app, wait till connect and touch three buttons…probably the old switcher from the wall cotinue to be a technology hard to overcome.
Technology that adapts to people, and not the other way
I think one of the most huge challenges of digital home is exactly there. During years, we have being designing devices and then we had asked people to learn how to use it. New apps, new menus, new passwords and configurations.
Maybe the next step is just making the opposite. Let our environment adapt and learn from us.
A home that makes it easier for us certain tasks when our mobility decrease. That could give us security when living alone.That reduce energy consumption without forcing us to constantly monitor it. That improves the communication with our families and professionals. Or that detect certain situations before it becomes a trouble.
We aren´t going to need all these things at the same time, and we are not all going to need same things. AndAnd that’s exactly the key.
The real intelligent home is not going to be the one that has more technology. Is going to be the one that knows how to use it when we need and to go unnoticed when we don´t.
More about Health and Wellbeing…
- Digital Home: when our houses start to take care of ourselves - 28 August 2026
- It´s my life and I want to keep deciding about it - 25 February 2022