Artificial Intelligence and IoT in Smart Homes

by Ajai T. Content Marketing Manager

IoT is the sensational topic that is here for quite some time now. But in the recent past years, IoT has gained more relevance. All the major technology giants are amazed about what IoT has achieved in the past and what more it has in the future for the mankind. Most of us are not aware of the term IoT. Let us first understand what IoT actually is.

First, What is IoT?

IoT is known as the Internet of Things. It is a system of interconnected devices that share the real-time information among themselves in a network. When devices like home appliances, vehicles, weather forecast systems, navigations systems are interconnected over a network, they together make the Internet of Things.

Let us take an example to understand the beauty of IoT:

You have a meeting at 10:00 am. You got an email that the meeting is delayed due to some reason. The smart alarm system connected to the email system automatically delays the alarm according to the stipulated time. Your coffee machine is also synched with your alarm system. As soon as your alarm hits, your coffee machines automatically brew coffee for you. You are ready to go and rain starts pouring outside. As a result, there is a huge traffic jam. IoT system automatically finds the best possible way of reaching your destination. Books ticket for you and you are ready to go. This is just an introduction of what IoT can achieve. IoT is a vast concept that can totally revolutionize the way things are done.

Let us discuss some more ways where artificial intelligence applications and IoT can be used in smart homes:

1. Thermostats - Keeping the Environment Comfortable

AI and IoT make your home environment comfortable and soothing. A thermostat is an IoT device that can be controlled by your smartphone from anywhere. It can sense the temperature of the atmosphere of your home. The smart sensors can automatically increase or decrease the temperature in different areas of your home. For example, the temperature in the living room will be different from the temperature in the bedroom or the kitchen. Google Nest is one of the most renowned brands that provide the best thermostats.

The body heat sensors can detect the number of persons present in the room and adjusts the temperature. The smart thermostats can detect the entry or exit of persons and maintains the temperature. It also has the ability to learn from past experience and can automatically sense and set the temperature based on historical data.

2. Smart Cleaning

House cleaning is a very important, time-consuming and tiring job. But it is very important for the proper hygiene and good health. Vacuum cleaners play a very important role in the house cleaning. Vacuum cleaners can clean the areas like carpets, floors, above and under the furniture, stairs, corners and other hard to reach places. But they require human involvement and effort to operate them, clean them, charge them and store them in their particular place.

AI and IoT have helped in making the smart cleaning technology. Because smart homes need smart cleaning too. Smart homes come with smart vacuum cleaners. These vacuum cleaners can work autonomously without any human intervention. Smart vacuum cleaning robots come with the pre-installed map of the house. They can perform the cleaning of their respective floors. They can detect the obstacles in the path and can perform cleaning in the hard to reach areas. The computer vision technology lets them identify the dirt, mud etc. They can even go to the charging dock by themselves and also go to their storage place after the cleaning is done.

3. Smart Power Consumption

Every home needs the power to operate. As smart home comes with various devices and sensors that are continuously working, power management and saving becomes very important. AI and IoT are assisting in making smart power systems that decrease the power consumption, let us see how.

As we all know that the power grids or electricity providers charge high rates during the peak usage of the power. This is because the demand for power is more. The high rates have increased the popularity of solar power panels. While solar panel installed in a home can reduce the demand of the power grids, but they are not sufficient to fulfill the power need of the entire house. So, batteries can be installed to store the solar energy during low usage times.

Here comes the role of AI and IoT. Smart systems can detect the price of the electricity from the updated server of power grids using API. It can automatically switch to the reserve power stored in batteries during the peak usage when the prices are high. It can also make a calculation about when it is more intelligent to use the cheap power from the grid and redirect all the power to the solar power system.

4. Voice Commands

In the past, smartphones were used to control the devices. But natural language processing has made it possible to control the home appliance via voice commands. You can turn on and off lightening systems. increase the temperature of your AC, command the coffee machine to brew the coffee and many more. The voice command system gets improved over the time and understand better what a user wants to say.

5. Health Monitoring

Smart homes can also provide the health monitoring for the elderly people. More and more elderly people want to stay independent as long as possible. The health monitoring system provides support to the family members and senior members. Motion sensors, door, and window contact sensors allow the family members to detect an emergency situation. For example, if the person has fallen or using phrases like “Help” continuously, the smart home system will immediately notify the family member by sending a notification to the smartphone.

6. Home Security

The smart home system comes with an intelligent security system and burglar prevention. It can protect your house from burglars when you are not at home or out for holidays for some days. It can automatically switch on and off lamps, raise and lower the window shutters and curtains, playing the dog barking sound in the loudspeaker to create an impact that house is not empty. It can identify any unknown face trying to enter the house.

7. Intelligent Control System

AI and IoT can simplify the management of complex situations. It can behave according to the situation. For example, if it starts raining, the AI system will automatically close the window panes. It can automatically turn on your TV set when your favorite program is going on air. During the house party, AI switches to party mode and automatically changes the lightening system and plays music in the loudspeakers. AI system can feed your pets when you are away from home. You can also program your smart home system to water your plants automatically at a regular interval of time. It can also automatically turn on and off the lights according to the visibility and time of day, turns on and off lights as you enter or leave the room.

Conclusion

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are making the houses of the future. The interconnected devices over the cloud let the devices to exchange a huge amount of data. This will improve the security as well as the standard of living. The intelligent power consumption can help in cost cutting of the power bills. The voice control makes your home to respond to your voice and talk back to you. All the above applications make home a smarter place to live in.

Sponsor Ads

• Ad Space Available - Rent it Now!

Created on Jul 31st 2018 01:22. Viewed 365 times.

Comments