Just about every facet of daily life can be changed to fit the preferences of the consumer. The field of smart home technology is leading the way in this shift towards private spaces.
With a quick verbal cue, Inhalio can release smells that correlate with your mood. Pre-programmed scenes like relax or focus that sync directly with TVs and other entertainment systems give the lights a pulse of light.
Mood lighting systems are used to set the lighting stage. Drivers can adjust the lighting based on how they feel. An energetic road trip may call for neon green while a calm evening may inspire aquamarine tones.
Beyond being fun, using multi-sensory technology to control our environment may help calm nerves, boost productivity, and make us feel better after a long day at work.
The smart home tech of the future will be able to read and adapt to our moods automatically. If you brought a date home, your smart home would dim the lights, play Barry White on the stereo, and chill a bottle of white in the fridge.
What does the house of the future look like? We talked to TNW’s founder and smart home tech enthusiast Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten about the joys of living in a connected home, futuristic product design, and what happens when AI truly gets to know you.
Beyond the hilarious and potentially mortifying situations this could create, it also raises ethical questions. Do we really want our homes to read our mood? How should the data these devices collect be used and stored and who should have access to it?
Data points can be gathered using machine learning. The system can predict what a user wants even without their help.
It has introduced a voice analysis tool called Tone which analyses energy and positive vibes in a user's voice. Users want to be able to improve their social interactions. Tone can analyze how a stressed out work day affects the way you talk to family and friends.
Privacy concerns arise from the movie 'Emotion Artificial Intelligence'. How personal data is collected, processed, and stored is a big question in the smart home space. If data is collected within a home and transmitted to an external server, the data has to travel from the intimate spaces of a private home to an unknown location for processing before being returned with a decision to turn on a light switch or open a door. The risk of corruption comes with the journey of data.
Consumers are the ones who hold the cards according to Eric Welander. As a trained software developer, Welander was always interested in ways to automate parts of everyday life, and when he was living in an apartment, he began to use smart- home technologies. He bought his first home and the possibilities grew. He documented his journey as he explored developments in new smart home gadgets.
Welander is aware that the line between convenience and privacy is always a delicate one in this industry. Welander said that any technology in your home has to come from a company that you trust.
Eve Home is a company that distinguishes itself by their privacy standards. Eve limits its own exposure to user data and avoids cloud storage entirely. Apple has a reputation for its end-to-end encryption standards.
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten is the founder and former CEO of TNW and lives in a connected home. My doorbell works with a closed system and does not allow uploading or saving footage to the cloud. Veldhuijzen van Zanten is always researching before buying a smart home tech. Chances are that a startup will be acquired by a larger corporation at some point, even if you did your due diligence and chose a startup. Your data is now with a company you didn't sign up for.
He is curious about the possibilities of mood based technologies. If my home or car could read my mood, I would like to turn on soft lights when I am down, play some uplifting music, or turn up the heating. It's an exciting new frontier that can help us put souls into machines.
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