Ubiquitous Computing in Smart Living and Appliance Control

Ubiquitous Computing in smart living and appliance control

By

Institution 

Contents

Introduction        

Research and requirements        

Case scenarios        

Requirement Analysis        

Functional requirements        

Nonfunctional requirements        

Environmental requirements        

Characteristics of the system        

Design and analysis based on the use cases        

Smart appliances        

Smart health.        

Design issues, challenges, constraints, and choices.        

Conclusion        

References        

Introduction

Ubiquitous computing has found application in various areas that penetrate all the walks of life thereby enabling the flow of data, information and integration of cognitive capabilities for future use. Mark Wesner gives a description of this vision as one which will transcend across the borders in applying various knowledge in different areas. My focus for ubiquitous computing in regards to this report will be based on smart living and appliance control. Smart living forms a component of ubiquitous computing that focuses on inculcating smartness in the residential places with an aim of achieving comfortability, improved health care, enhancing safety, reducing security threats, and conserving energy. The appliance control that would comprise the smart living is centered on one form of knowledge referred to us remote monitoring of systems. Remote monitoring uses telecommunications and web techniques that facilitate remote home control and even support patients remotely from specialized assistance centers. Considering the advancements in the trends of research, smart home would be defined as an application of ubiquitous computing with capabilities of providing user context-aware that is automated within the framework of very close intelligence, home control from a distance or home automation

Smart living improve the quality of life through the introduction of automated appliances control and assistive services. They maintain the comfort of the user at its climax through utilization of context awareness and predefined delimitate constraints that bases on the condition of the home environment. In the smart living and appliance control, a user can control home appliances and other devices from a remote based area thereby enabling him to accomplish tasks before setting feet on home. Ambient intelligence systems used for monitoring in this case occasionally standardize the household’s electricity usage. In the smart living improvement of security and safety mechanisms is enhanced through the use of intelligent surveillance and access control.  Researchers claim that at least twenty percent of the globe’s population will be approximately 60years old by 2050 (Bloom, Canning & Fink, 2010). This means that this particular group will have a problem with living alone without proper external care and is more likely to suffer from long-term chronic diseases such as diabetes and other communicable diseases. Supporting all these patients will seem difficult for the government as they will populate the medical centers for an undefined period. The long term solution would, therefore, be to provide assistive technologies for such patients and health care under home environment.

Chan, Estève, Escriba & Campo (2008) describes a general overview of smart home through a recent survey they carried out where they give an insight into elements such as robots and implantable devices. Location awareness is another important prerequisite that would assist in the development of an intelligent environment as far as smart home is concerned. This involves the use of location detection techniques in the context of several taxonomies such as physical position, symbolic location, absolute and relative measurements.

This research paper will center on various aspects of smart living and appliance control which will be looked at from perspectives of case scenarios that have worked, the requirements and architectural design of the smart home technology based appliances. These components will exclusively focus on maintaining a smart home through the use of Android application system in smartphones.

As it is known any feasible form of technology should center on economic costs for its operation that is, it should be affordable to any person who is willing to adopt it. Therefore, the Android system used in this case will communicate with the small web server to provide more transitional functionalities at minimum costs while integrating voice into the system for effective switching. Equipment such as switches of light, plugins of power, humidity and temperature sensors among others have been incorporated into the organization structure to promote the applicability and the efficiency of the suggested smart living system which changes the environment into an automated one.

Research and requirements

Case scenarios

        The case scenarios looked at here will focus on two areas that form part of smart home namely health system particularly caring for the elderly and energy conservation through the use of smart appliances.

Elderly-friendly smart home.

Germany has quite a high number of aging population, and it has therefore become challenging taking care of the population from a public health perspective. Ambient Intelligence and Ambient Assisted Living will offer support to the new generations of the older adults to improve their quality of living. In this case scenario, automation of home, detection of behavior, telemedicine, and human system interface are subsystems that generate data which is managed by the centralized server applications. Data is collected from a broad perspective of various medical sensors which differ in the transmission types and network technologies, processing capabilities, and storage. The local server performs the processing operations according to the functionalities implemented for observation. To acquire data efficiently, several systems are integrated in a way that enhances user and event orientation for the interaction to meet the needs of the user under various circumstances. The system uses smart TV, touch screen devices which are mobile, and devices with nearfield communication properties which enhance the system’s interaction with the user and send instructions in the form of commands to request information. Data is then transmitted using HTTP connections to the local server which replies using the JavaScript Object Notation to any customer application request in spite of the original data appearance and arrangement (Ghorbel et al., 2012). The smart TV is used in this case as it is easy to familiarize with and furthermore every home is looking forward to having a smart TV. So in this case, the smart TV application enables the control and monitoring of functions through addressing specific services the local server exhibits through HTTP requests. The configuration of the system file is downloaded from the server, saved in one general area of the TV and is then utilized in executing all the functions. Examples of functionalities include monitoring of energy, automatic reminders for drug intake, telemedicine related services that are representations of the figures collected by some devices in the electro-medicine. Brief, precise instructions offer guidance to the user through pop-up messages which notify about the results of the diversified procedures to identify different issues and provide the way forward (Obi, Ishmatova & Iwasaki, 2013).

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