Soon Your Home May Be Smarter Than You Are

Just about everything has the word “smart” appended to it these days: smart grids, smart phones, smart washing machines. But when Diane Cook talks about the “smart homes” she has been researching at Washington State University, she is not simply referring to homes that are wired or connected, homes that run with more energy efficiency or homes that produce their own data.

She’s talking about homes – filled with small sensors, each connected to a central computer program – that actually have the ability to reason what’s going on inside them. Let’s say you get out of bed every morning at 7:45. A smart home will eventually learn this about you and start prepping the coffee pot at 7:30. Leave the oven on longer than seems plausible for a pot roast? A smart home can point this out to you. In learning about the remarkably consistent routines most of us move through on a daily basis, a smart home might even detect the first signs of dementia.