Until
next week, 
The Intelligent Machine Post:
Smart Homes
Issue 00000011
Dateline: February 7, 1998
This week's issue is somewhat sparse, since my mailbox at The Mining Company seems to have broken down and I am not receiving results from my Inquisit searchbot. This also means that if you have been writing to me, at least since Friday evening when I know for sure mail was broke, I have not received your messages, so please re-send in a couple of days, adter TMC has figured out what's wrong with mail. Thanks.
ARCHITECTED structures such as airliners, automobiles, and cameras have made quantum jumps in embedded intelligence; but not houses, whose only glimmering of intelligence is in the thermostat and the fire and burglar alarm. Writing recently for The Business Journal, Mike Consol provides an update on the status of efforts to build intelligence into houses.
The good ol' MIT, always at the cutting edge of the cutting edge, thinks it's time to move forward. Chris Luebkeman and Kent Larson, of MIT's department of architecture, are working on a "home-of-the-future" project focused on revising the entire housing design process to incorporate advanced digital controls and devices into the very fabric of the house.
The first step in that design process is to give architects and their clients the tools to create virtual reality representations they can walk through as though they were walking through a real house. Nothing new about VR; in fact I recall that Autodesk, maker of the Autocad drafting program, had created VR walkthroughs years ago. The difference today is that the computing power to do it is affordable.
The architect and the client will be able to scratch out sketches by hand on an electronic notepad, and the computer will transform the sketches through embedded AI into precise 3-D images and even VR projections into head-mounted displays (HMDs) worn by the architect and client. With datagloves, they can instantly change the size or shape of a room, add, remove, and resize windows, and so on
Such capability is "not that far away," according to Luebkeman.
It's not enough, though, to use technology just to make it easier to design a traditional home. The technology can also be used to design intelligence into the house itself. Luebkeman gave the examples of modeling air flow from the home's heating and cooling system, but there's a lot more to it than that. Bill Gates' new home "knows" exactly who and where the occupants are at any given time and what their individual preferences for music are. It anticipates their arrival in a room by turning on the lights, the heat, and the stereo.
My off-the-cuff prediction would be that such intelligent features will be routinely included in rich folks' new homes in about five years from now, and in middle-class new homes in about a decade. The poor will be able to buy Bill Gates' old palace for a song, and eat cake.
For a less sanguine view, check
out this paper
by Met Ulker.
Until
next week,
NEXT WEEK: Crystal balls. My interest in AI is very much oriented to the future, so it's time I said something about the business of forecasting.