Smart Home as a Digital Environment

Smart Home as a Digital Environment Lyubomir Blagoev, Kamen Spassov Abstract: The article presents a new concept of Smart Home. It is based on the approach toward the contemporary home as an environment in which people and autonomous devices coexist. The paradigm of conventional integration of systems and devices is replaced with content exchange within a semantic network environment. The control of home related devices is replaced with ad hoc communication. The Smart Home notion is presented as a part of the Internet of things space. Important common issues between development of Smart Home and Internet of Things are discussed. Key words: Smart Home, Semantic Networks, Semantic Models, Internet of Things (IoT), Internet of Smart Things (IoST).

Introduction The sharp decrease of the cost of microprocessors in the 80s of the last century was a precondition for the emergence of the idea of Smart Home. The low cost microprocessors enabled the economic viability of the ideas of low cost automation in the industry. Smart Home notions emerged as attempts to use microprocessors outside the industry but not as a vehicle to change the way of living at home environment. This approach was not very successful according to Gann at al. [1] although it is implied indirectly. The overview from the 90s does not present the Smart Home idea as a mature one. Almost 10 years later a similar overview [2] does not show a substantial improvement in this direction. In essence the Smart Home concept is unchanged. There are many definitions of Smart Home but it is hard to find a comprehensive definition accepted by a broad range of developers of Smart Home devices. The different views of Smart Home have some similarities that could be seen as important elements of a common Smart Home concept. Almost all look at the Smart Home as a large and complicated system to control intelligent devices in home environment. Inhabitants of this environment interact with it making decisions on application of control actions and monitor the outcome. Obviously the more complex the future Smart Home is evolving the more complicated becomes its control. Therefore the inhabitants will need stronger engagement with the control. Ergo from served by an intelligent environment with a high degree of automation Smart Home inhabitants could turn into servants of a system of smart devices. Smart Home control idea immediately leads to the interface that provides functionality to support such control. With the increasing complexity of Smart Home it is possible to come to a state with so complicated interface that is comparable with the control interface of a space ship. The specifics of the dominant Smart Home vision are reflected in the current pilots that are not so many. A good illustration is POBICS [3]. The authors propose a nice solution with a middleware tools set that enables a desired configuration of a particular Smart Home control system. The solution provides scalability, agility, etc. But the system still falls within the vision of a control system that during the development could turn into a mega control system with all the related usage problems. The article proposes a new Smart Home concept and related specifics of putting it into practice.

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Smart Home as a community People living in a home solve everyday problems communicating with each other. For example a kid tells to a parent that it has spilled something on the floor and the parent begins cleaning. If the parent working with the vacuum cleaner prevents the kid to get out of the cleaning zone, the kid will ask him to stop for a while to pass though without a collision with the vacuum cleaner. Similar scenario is quite possible in a Smart Home. For example the kid will ‘tell’ the vacuum cleaner robot to clean the floor. Usually the vacuum cleaner robot starts its everyday program in work days when all inhabitants are out of the home and the security system is switched on. Before the start of cleaning the vacuum cleaner robot will ‘inform’ the security system that it will move within the security perimeter. This way the home will be secured, but the security system will ‘know’ that this moving object is not intervening. Currently all Smart Home devices have remote control capabilities using Internet connectivity. Almost any advertisement emphasizes on the ability one going back home to use remote control to switch on/off or to set parameters of certain devices to prepare desired conditions for a comfortable arrival at home. Having a lot of Smart Home devices will require a long sequence of accessing each device and setting it (getting data, analyzing it, setting a control). This way, Smart Home inhabitants from served ones are turning into servants. It makes sense in the Smart Home space to have something that takes the role of ‘Home Digital Steward’ (HDSw). HDSw, after getting a message “Darling, I am coming back home”, could control all the Smart Home devices to prepare the home for the arrival of the home inhabitant. Moreover, HDSw could prompt the person to do some errands sending a shopping list, etc. HDSw could even make some orders, get the delivery from a drone, and place it appropriately, if the home inhabitant acquired a pick & place robot. Following a similar relationship pattern a robot could ‘tell’ to HDSw that its accumulators become unstable and there is a need to plan a replacement with new ones. If the robot sends a message directly to its owners, in many cases, they will delete the message because they would believe they memorized it and ‘in a moment’ they will put a task to replace the accumulators in their task list. It is probable that they will forget to do so, therefore, designers of the robot will program it to send the message periodically which is annoying. Same for the vacuum cleaner, stove, fridge, etc. HDSw could release the home inhabitant from the troubles collecting all the ‘complaints’ of the Smart Home devices, prioritizing them, and sending message to the related person (could be somebody else than the owner – e.g. service technician) in appropriate moment. A plenty of scenarios could be easily created in which Smart Home inhabitants or related persons are collaborating with the Smart Home devices within the available embedded intelligence and accepted autonomy. The most important is that such scenarios are not only useful but also relatively easy and inexpensive to implement even now without using complicated artificial intelligence tools. The new Smart Home concept replaces the vision for Smart Home as a functional space of a control system with the home space for collaboration of members - humans and devices with the available embedded intelligence and granted autonomy. In this way the concept defines the interacting humans and devices in a Smart Home as a Home Digital Community (HDC). This digital community consists of: 

Smart Home members presented in a unified manner, despite of the differences in their real physical appearance. -2-

For example the semantic presentation of two functionally identical devices will be similar, despite of the differences in their construction. Human Smart Home members will be presented using the same unified approach. There is no need semantic presentation to reflect their intellectual capacity. The unified semantic presentation will be limited to the defined interactions within the HDC. 

Presentation of the interactions between Smart Home members (individuals and devices) as semantic relationships of their unified presentations within the HDC. The tools for this presentation should be also unified with a semantic description, not related with the physical appearance.

HDC is a unified environment with unified presented but semantically different members that have different semantic relationships despite of the unified presentation of the relationships. In HDC will ‘live’ artificially created members like HDSw, why not ghosts, heroes from children tales and so on. Smart Home Digital Infrastructure The semantic presentation of Smart Home members is an expression of their physical nature. For example the semantic of the temperature sensor will be the level of the temperature, the degree of the temperature rising etc. It means, that the signal from this sensor has to be received and processed in suitable manner to be achieved the defined HDC unification. For this purpose it is necessary to support a variety of connectivity (WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, data transmission trough the power supply network, etc.). There is also a need to support logically different data transmission protocols. To present human semantic in HDC it is necessary to receive information from different devices, working like input/output terminals e.g. smartphones, tablets, computers, and so on. The connectivity and transmission protocols of those devices might differentiate. The set of resources which support the semantic presentation of the members of HDC defines Home Digital Infrastructure – HDI. HDI is a collection of independent hardware and software tools, forming channels for two-way transmission of content from/to these devices. Specifics of the implementation of these channels are dependent on each device. The HDC space and HDI resources have to be perceived as a common Smart Home Digital Environment - SHDE. A unique identification of each SHDE member (or HDC members) is needed. The IoT principle ‘one device one IP address’ is not applicable in all types of connectivity e.g. Bluetooth, NFC etc. HDC identification needs to be separated from the data channels implementation. This identification is purely logical and it is enough to be supported only within HDC. The new Smart Home concept replaces the data exchange between SHDE members with semantic connectivity between them realized in the HDC space. Direct communication between the connected devices within HDI is not foreseen. This way there is no need to develop hardware and software tools to transform different protocols. The need to develop tools to process the exchanged data during the transmission is also eliminated. HDI resources are greatly reduced to the minimum possible, thus achieving the lowest possible cost of its implementation. This is one of the most important prerequisites for the applicability of the proposed Smart Home concept. HDI has another important advantage- it could be extended with totally different (still unknown) communication channels without any impact on the already built ones. The explosive growth of ICT will provide us with nice surprises in the years to come and will give us the opportunity to use new types of flexible and low cost communication with any devices. -3-

Smart Home Digital Environment Architecture The definitions of HDI and HDC define a very simple architecture as shown on fig.1. Home Digital Community D

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Figure 1. Smart Home Digital Environment Development, extension, and maintenance of SHDE-configurations with such architecture are much easier and cheaper. To connect a device to the SHDE a Connector is needed. To create a connector one needs a good knowledge of:  

the interfaces of the devices HDC-standards for creation of models of HDC objects

In most of the cases the first requirement will be more specific and will have a bigger weight when developing a Connector for a new device. It is economically viable companies that produce devices for Smart Homes or companies specialized in maintenance and support of protocols for such devices to develop Connectors. If combine development of an HDI object with the development of the respective Connector the need for definition and maintenance of an open interface to link the connector and the HDC space will be eliminated. Instead of this it is enough to open the HDC space by publishing their internal standards. Opening the standards will allow other companies and developers who are not involved in the development of a some concrete HDC platform to take part in the further development and extension of the Smart Home concept, for example developers of Connectors. Third party companies will be able to develop and implement HDC models of new semantic relationships within the HDC space. This will add value to the existing HDI and HDC resources and will provide with new functionalities the Smart Home realizations and additional revenue for their authors. It is clear that the proposed SHDE Architecture leads to a natural decentralization of the activities to implement, develop, and maintain SHDE configurations. Small and medium companies, even -4-

freelance developers will be able to participate. Moreover the development of SHDE resources could follow the pattern of development of mobile applications. This will attract a lot of talent and will accelerate the development of Smart Home realizations. SHDE and Semantic Interoperability The HDC idea is strongly related to the Semantic interoperability. In order to communicate with each other in HDC, SHDE members need to understand each other like family members living together and speaking the same language. The variety of concepts, data and processes in SHDE that have to be semantically interoperable is commensurate with the diversity of people's lives, because Smart Home is part of real life. It is clear that such a range of interoperability cannot be achieved as goal in itself, especially in terms of decentralization, which is a prerequisite for the realization of Smart Home ideas. The achievement of such interoperability is feasible and economically viable, if carried out as an extension of the scope of some basic semantic interoperability. The e-Governance semantic interoperability is appropriate for extension. It is possible and economically to apply models and tools described by Blagoev [4]. This approach gives the opportunity to combine objects and their models, representing tools for the establishment and maintenance of semantic interoperability in a general semantic network of administration, i.e. e-Governance, as discussed in other publication of the authors [5]. It is possible to unite the HDC semantic network with the e-Governance semantic network. This will allow sharing registries to support definitions of concepts, data and processes both for the purposes of e-Governance and in creation of SHDE resources. SHDE and Internet of Things Currently it is hard to find a clear and comprehensive definition and Internet of Things (IoT). Since the Smart Home has "things" it can be considered that the Smart Home forms part of the IoTspace. The ideas of SHDE enable to define a possible interface for integration of SHDE in IoT space. The foundation of this interface will be the semantic of the data maintained in HDC. The proposed SHDE Architecture is founded on autonomous behavior of SHDE members, by introducing unified semantic representations of SHDE members and unified interactions between them. There are not restrictions toward HDC. I.e. a SHDE member of a SHDE configuration could interact semantically with other SHDE members form another SHDE configurations in the same manner as it interacts with SHDE member within the SHDE configuration it belongs to. The restrictions could be only semantical. For example a chef-robot could get a recipe of a certain dish from a SHDE member of its own SHDE configuration. It can also get a recipe from other chefrobot who could be a SHDE member of other SHDE configuration, but also it could be a standalone device available in the IoT space. The semantic restrictions, for example, may concern vegetarian recipes only. A number of security problems arise establishing and maintaining links with autonomous devices outside the ‘family’ SHDE configuration, problems with differences in protocols, etc. The variety of all these problems is hard to cover and obviously they will be resolved case by case, with a strong drive to achieve maximum standardization. The identification of the participants in such interactions is a general problem. For example, as mentioned above, the inhabitants of a Smart Home will be identified at their Smart Home as SHDE-members. As such, they may interact with devices and systems outside of their home SHDE-configuration, if an opportunity to be identified through it is provided. But an individual outside a SHDE-configuration is subject to civil identification, according to the laws and the means -5-

to that are used in the particular country. Therefore identification portability Home to State (H2S) and State to Home (S2H) should be established. IoT-interaction does not recognize borders and identification must also be portable from one country to another - State to State (S2S). Similarly problems with purely technical identification by IP address arise. At the same time it must be considered that IoT devices step by step will acquire some level of autonomy – this might be also a risk factor. There are problems with the consequences of the risks that materialize – who takes the responsibility for those consequences, how to identify the responsibility holder, etc. The same goes for the devices that are SHDE-members. They also are getting smarter with increasing level of autonomy which is beneficial to the Smart Home inhabitants, but at the same time they are also risk sources. Talking about Smart Home as a part of the general IoT space we need to reconsider the vision of it and to define it as to Internet of Smart Things (IoST). Conclusions The creation of a Smart Home has to be carried out with a vision for a long term goal of these efforts. A general characteristic of this long term goal is the high level of autonomous behavior of various devices in the future digital world. These intelligent devices will interact with people and with each other and will have an influence comparable with the influence of people on components of this future world, and on it as a whole. Problems that will evolve from such coexistence will be resolved by even stronger symbiosis between technology and law than the current one. Autonomous intelligent devices interacting with each other and with people might become subjects of current or future laws. Therefore the creation of these devices should be governed by a vision that they will be treated as individuals managed by rules. In certain conditions these rules could be similar to those that govern human behavior. As it was mentioned beforehand Smart Home can be understood as a part of the general IoST space. Therefore the discussed problems of coexistence of people and intelligent devices will be a part of the general IoST space. So arises the question: is the Smart Home a „small IoST configuration“, or IoST is a „huge SHDEconfiguration“?

Abbreviations HDC – Home Digital Community: A set of unified representations of humans, devices, and virtual objects operating in a Smart Home Environment.

HDI – Home Digital Infrastructure: The set of technical solutions which allow to represent devices as unified virtual objects

SHDE – Smart Home Digital Environment: The HDI and HDC together define common environment ensuring the data processing in the Smart Home.

SHDE components: Every component of Smart Home equipment independently of its appurtenance to HDI or HDC.

SHDE Architecture:

The set of SHDE components and connections/relationships between them, ensuring the Smart Home functionality, based on proposed HDI and HDC functionality.

SHDE configurations: A particular set of SHDE components and connections between them. -6-

SHDE members: Participant in SHDE, or SHDE components which can be represented with their own behavior no matter humans or devices.

SHDE resource: SHDE component which has its own Smart Home functionality, or supports some functionalities working together with other components.

HDC platform: A particular realization of HDC. HDC can be realized on different operation systems, with different technologies etc.

CObj – Community Object: HDC object, a virtual representation/entity of a set of functions which are not directly related to some kind of physical device or human.

IObj – Infrastructure Object: HDC object, which is directly connected to some kind of physical device. HDSw – Home Digital Steward: A Smart Home virtual member with behavior similar to the behavior of a human home servant.

References [1.] D. Gann, J. Barlow and T. Venables, Digital Futures: Making Homes Smarter, Chartered Institute of Housing/JRF, 1999, p. ix [2.] Sinclair Alex, Vision of Smart Home The Role of Mobile in the Home of the Future, GSMA [3.] Palacka V., Taumberger M., Anagnostopoulos K., Koyš J., Prekop J., Chabada J., Domaszewicz J., Paczesny T., Lalis S., Proxy-based Approach to Expose KNX Devices through Pervasive Computing Middleware, KNX Scientific Conference 2010 [4.] Blagoev L., Automatics & Informatics, 3/2011, National Data and Processes Model in Administrations [5.] Blagoev L., Spassov K., NMDPA -Part of the Semantic Network of the Administration, International Conference InfoTech-2013

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