CONVENIENCE
Increased automation can be observed in many application domains. One good example for concepts stemming from digitalization and the domain of IoT precipitating automation is the home automation sector. Home automation also known as domotics allows a user to control lighting, climate, entertainment systems, and appliances in its home. The trend of home automation is fostered by appliances and products become smarter and connected, which allows their control and concertation. While new buildings often feature home automation systems an even bigger market in the context of home automation is retrofitting existing buildings and appliances with home automation solutions. Given the rapid development of new products, protocols and interfaces home automation system providers face a number of challenges. Their systems must allow an easy integration of an ever-growing market of solutions often differing in the used underlying technologies, for which they must provide dependable control solutions. In addition, given the private nature of home the systems must be secure and compliant to privacy regulations, while offering solutions which are easy and intuitive to use, scalable and optimize a living / office space in a non-intrusive way. This requires modular and flexible solutions which can be continuously adapted to allow for the integration of new products and appliances. Similar to other application domains of digitalization a dependable and secure connectivity between system and appliances is a key aspect. Wireless communication technology provides a good alternative to its wired counterpart as it ideally reduces installation and service efforts and does not intervene in the target environment. However, this freedom comes with a cost as wireless communication does not necessarily provide the required dependability e.g., due to interferences among devices communication solutions.
This MFP aims for developing an IoT strategy for an existing home automation solution. This concerns the evaluation and refinement of the underlying IT-infrastructure and services to allow for scalability, while providing dependable and secure communication and interaction between the systems entity. In addition, the project will develop wireless communication technology, which minimizes interference (in terms of communication) among the systems entities and adjusts to application scenarios to optimize the dependability of the overall system.
Goals
CONVENIENCE aims for the conception of an IoT strategy and roadmap for an existing home automation solution and provide is on new methods and concepts to (i) improve the scalability of the system in terms of the number of connections between the managed entities (ii) provide the seamless integration of IoT / mobile devices in the system, (iii) ensure a secure communication within the system and provide means to protect and shield sensitive data from attacks or data leaks and at the same time (iv) allow for a decentralized and concerted update to maintain the system (server, apps, studio, ...). In addition, the project will investigate the application of (v) a wireless over-the-air update functionality for the customer as well as the (vi) adaptivity and configuration of wireless communication among different radio technology.
Approach
First, a detailed screening of the existing system and its architecture is performed. Based on this screening the systems performance and accordingly the optimization potential will be established. In parallel to the system’s screening the requirements of the application scenarios are identified. This information is used to establish a strategy for the system’s improvement and highlights technological gaps in the context of wireless communication which can be tackled. The system’s roadmap is developed in the context of existing and established open source software. Identified tech gaps in the context of dependable wireless communication (e.g., dependable over the air updates, cross technology communication) will be researched and the resulting technology will be tested in the form of demonstrators and real world use cases of the system.
Expected and Achieved Results
The outcome of the project is two-fold. On the one hand the project will result in a roadmap outlining the necessary steps and concepts to refine an existing home automation system to
- improve the scalability of the overall system
- allows for the seamless integration of new entities in the system
- ensure a secure communication and data storage within the system
- allow for decentralized updates.
As wireless communication plays an important role to realize such a system the project will also investigate f wireless communication in the context of home automation to provide and establish concepts/methods for
- dependable wireless over-the-air update functionality
- the concertation of different wireless communication technology within a home automation system
The investigated topics will result in tech demos and prototypes and accompanying methodology which allow the transfer of the project results in other application domains.
