Project group The 6th Sense - A Smarter Home
Project group The 6th Sense - A Smarter Home
The 6th Sense - A Smarter Home
Today, a classic "smart home" is characterised by the fact that various sensors are used to control the infrastructure of the house/apartment. For example, the smart home can automatically darken the windows if the sun is too strong. The functions can often also be controlled via the internet or smartphone apps. For example, you can set your home to always have a coffee at 7 a.m. or switch on the coffee machine from your smartphone so that you can have a ready-made coffee when you get home from your lecture. But what if the smart home realised on its own that you wanted a coffee? In other words, it becomes the resident's "sixth sense"?
For a "sixth sense", the smart home would have to become a little "smarter" and not only know the status of the house, but also, for example, know what the resident is currently doing, learn from them and possibly estimate what they will do. However, the smart home cannot do this if the person is still at university, for example. It would therefore have to rely on other sources of information, such as the sensors on the smartphone, the location of the notebook or status messages on social networks. The aim of the project group is to realise such a "smarter home".
What the goal is
A smart home only considers the linking of events: e.g. the window is opened when it rains and the window is open:
But if you want the home to adapt to the occupant, for example by recognising that you always have a coffee in the evening and the machine turns on by itself. In such a smart home, the processing system should also be able to learn.
In a smart home, the "intelligence" of the home is managed in a central control unit. To do this, the various sensor data, status messages (or whatever else is possible) must be processed in order to generate actions or knowledge. Odysseus (a data stream system from our department) can be used and expanded for this purpose.
The aim of the project group is therefore to build a system to make today's home automation even smarter...
Specific tasks of the PG
The specific task of the PG is to develop an end-user-compatible system for intelligent home automation (based on Odysseus)
The project has a wide range of possibilities. Depending on the size and interest of the PG, the following tasks can be worked on, which can be divided into 3 blocks (layers):
- Interaction with the environment
- Intuitive GUI for residents and "technicians"
- Connection of different sources and sensors, e.g:
- Kinect for person recognition or control
- Smartphones
- Learning from data (data mining)
- What are typical behaviour patterns (recognition of activities)
- How can this knowledge be used to increase living comfort through automation?
- Physical integration into the household
- Execution on a set-top box / router
We are also open to your own suggestions! The specific tasks will be determined with the participants at the start of the PG - so no pig in a poke!
Notes and persons
The project group is suitable for all students (Computing Science, Business Informatics or ESMR) - especially for those specialising in ISSE / KISS or the specialisations "IT in Healthcare" and "IT in the Energy Industry"
For questions and information, please contact the following persons:
- Dipl.-Inform. Dennis Geesen
- Dr Marco Grawunder
- MSc Thomas Vogelgesang
- Prof. Dr Dr h.c. H.-Jürgen Appelrath