Achievement

Individuals spend a majority of their time in a home or workplace and these places are their sanctuaries. IGERT trainees Brian Thomas and Kyle Feuz are designing homes and workplaces that are also smart. A smart environment is one that acquires and applies knowledge about its residents and their surroundings in order to provide activity-aware services. In order to add these capabilities to a home, wireless sensors are installed throughout the home. These sensors can detect, for example, motions of home occupancy. Using the designed technology, sensor events are collected in a database and are analyzed using ambient intelligence techniques, including machine learning and data mining, to recognize resident activities. In this past year, our smart home-based behavior modeling software was awarded a patent. In addition, we have licensed the smart home in a box to several companies who are furthering research in smart homes and smart communities.