The intuitive control of smart home and office environments

Abstract

Along with the associated film, this paper presents an approach to individually controlling home and office fixtures such as lights, window blinds, cooling and ventilation units with an 'intuitive gesture-based controller' using a smart phone. The implementation of the gesture controls is based on the magnetometer, gyroscope and accelerometer built into the most recent smart phones. The user simply points to target objects and completes specific gestures. For example, pointing to the top of a window and completing a "down"-gesture is interpreted as a command to lower the blinds at the window. Pointing the device to a light fixture and doing an "up"-gesture raises the light levels. In combination with addressable fixtures and wireless infrastructures, this phone controller reveals how a wide variety of fixtures in a building can be intuitively controlled by pointing, using only a single button and gesturing.