Nubilum Ad Hominem: Taking smart homes steps further

Abstract

Smart home technologies are developed with the goal of offering convenience to their users, but the currently available technologies are reactive, either to user commands or to user routine, as opposed to being proactive, and are not capable of taking the environment around the user into consideration when making an analysis. In addition, most existing systems have a strictly top-down hierarchical structure, where a central device such as the user’s mobile phone controls the system to the point where the lack thereof impacts the functionality of the system on a tremendous scale, and may sometimes result in a cascading failure rendering the entire system inoperable.This article focuses on the relationship and connection between various unconnected data points scattered across a person’s quotidian life, as well as the decentralized connection between smart home devices, both on a microscopic and on a community scale. It seeks to propose an alternative system that takes into account not only user commands and routines, but also pieces of information disseminated by the surrounding environment, which the user might not have perceived or understood, and incorporates them into its own process of analysis. Further more, the proposed system emphasizes modularization and decentralization, such that the addition and removal of a node should not impact the system outside of the specific functionality provided by the said node.