homeBLOX: introducing process-driven home automation

Abstract

Home automation promises more convenience for residential living. We propose process-driven home automation as an approach to reduce the difficulty of specifying automation tasks without restricting users in terms of customizability and complexity of supported scenarios. Our graph-based user interface abstracts from the complexity of process specification, while created sequences are automatically translated into BPEL code for execution. Our homeBLOX architecture extends a process engine with the capabilities to communicate with heterogeneous smart devices, integrate virtual devices, and support different home automation protocols. We report on initial user tests with our automation interface and demonstrate the customizability and expressiveness of our system based on realized example use cases.