Friday, August 1, 2008

Inside Emerging Technologies

The future home offers efficiency, entertainment and advice

By James M. Connolly

So, you’re a homeowner, the boss, king of the castle. Now, suppose that your home was in control, that it knew where you were along your commute home, or that your home “persuaded” you to save energy, exercise and eat right. So much for being king or queen of that castle.

The home of the future is taking shape in high-end, custom-designed homes, houses wired by gadget geeks, and labs. Proven and new technologies are being pulled together in home-area networks by system integrators and architects responding to the demands of people who love their toys, care for the environment and hate fat utility bills. However, while the owners of multimillion-dollar homes will pay tens of thousands of dollars for customized touchscreen control over lights, heat, music and more, home automation hasn’t developed into a wave yet because the mass market hasn’t demanded it.

However, researchers at MIT are working on having the technologies ready for homeowners when that tipping point occurs. One element of the future home may be that it will use “context aware and persuasive technologies,” according to Kent Larson, lead investigator for MIT’s House_n initiative, a research group that explores new residential designs, materials and technologies.

One example of what House_n has prototyped is a thermostat that communicates with a GPS-enabled cell phone to know when the resident is enroute home and adjusts the temperature to a pre-set comfort level. But it can go still further, detailing how much energy it helped you save, perhaps by noting how many carbon-fuel power plants won’t have to be built if everyone adopts similar technology.

“Persuasion is how it shows you the implications in savings of a higher temperature setting in the summer or a lower setting in the winter,” said Larson.

Another House_n project uses persuasion through software on a PDA to encourage people to get more exercise and watch less TV. “It maintains a real-time activity count based on the exercise you are getting, your goals in limiting how much TV you watch, and it suggests alternative activities,” said Larson.

While what Larson discusses is still in the lab, architect Joseph L. Luna, principal of the Luna Design Group in Lynnfield, brings today’s technologies into the home, albeit some pretty expensive homes. Many feature centralized control of diverse systems, such as heating and cooling, lighting, home theater and computing, in addition to leading-edge, energy-saving windows doors and insulation.

“This originally came out as bells and whistles and bragging rights at cocktail parties. Today we’re looking at not only how integrated systems work for fun stuff like lighting and audio/video but for things like heating and cooling. You can see some cost savings by tieing these systems together,” said Luna.

While some concepts, such as home theater, have trickled down into mid-market residences, initiatives continue at the high end, according to Luna. Today, high-end home  systems aren’t about a single room but about extending home theater to any space with a TV,  shades or blinds that open and close in response to sunrise and sunset, the ability to control every light from a single touchscreen, and room-level control of heating and cooling.

While high-end systems managing hundreds of elements require programming and specialized installers, Luna notes that companies such as Cutting Edge Systems Corp. of Westford are offering the midmarket basic, pre-programmed packages of its custom systems.

The desire to go “green” is a driving force in new home design. Homeowners want to save energy and be environmentally responsible. But don’t link that interest in home automation to the recent spikes in fuel prices, noted IDC research manager Jonathan Gaw. A $20 bump in the electric bill “doesn’t get people running out to buy these things,” he said.

Gaw said one persuasive technology is ready for tests in California where utilities will use advanced electric meters to show consumers in real time how much energy they are consuming, and, potentially, warn them of price hikes during peak usage periods.

Gaw cites one of the limitations on adoption of advanced home electronics, particularly in older homes. “I don’t see any major stumbling blocks In terms of the capability of the technology. I see it as more of a  marketing issue. What are the business cases? How do we sell it? How do we package it?” he said.

One homeowner who moved to  green design is Jeff Fullerton, a consultant with Acentech of Cambridge. He renovated a century-old house in Somerville and incorporated spray-in insulation and geothermal heat. “The fact that we were able to drill a well in the city would surprise some people,” he said.

Fullerton also incorporated sound-absorbing materials wherever possible. That makes sense; he’s a sound consultant. Costing up to $50 per square foot today, those materials will be more suited for the average home, he said.

Not only are home components and controls changing. Larson predicts a move to plumbing and electric components that snap together, and homes that are computer configurable. Working off a standard design, home buyers would customize elements such as colors to their own tastes, as people do today with cars. In most cases, the architect notes, that approach “would eliminate people like me.”