AOL Home of the 21 st Century Project

1. AOL Home of the 21st Century Project Computer Science DepartmentSeptember 2001

2. Content • Current Status • Vision • Audio PIM • Home Energy • Multi-Station and Fault Tolerance

3. Current Status • Remote Management (RM) is done • RM can accept any • Web connection • Other connection using an existing template • CE and ECE can connect to RM • Handling a new connection and its data is done through XML and should take a couple of hours

4. Current Status - continued • Personalization is done: • Collects inputs on an archive • Does not have “real home” data to be tested properly • Ready for automatic personalization

5. Vision • The Home • stays a home • complex, alive and evolving • occupants belong to the same family • Family member are of various ages, different know-how, different needs

6. Benign, non-overbearing, support of family and residents • Residents of the Home have habits and routines. • Members of a family have family routines and relationship patterns • For example, parents may override kids selection of TV program. • The Home of the 21st Century should not impose behavioral patterns, dress code, and protocols that are not routine already

7. Extendible services, support, and ease of use • Add services currently not available • notification of a pending e-mail coming out of the corner of the TV set • an address book for a Web-enabled phone that offers not only a name and a telephone number, but also a picture of the party called

8. Behavioral, habitual, and efficient personalization • Continuous adaptation to users patterns • Data will be accumulated and analyzed to distinguish between residents • Provide support to the individual resident by predicting forthcoming behavior

9. XML-based distributed computing • A home with a personal computer serving as center of services, a Web tablet and a JAVA Phone can, for instance, offer enhanced services a single appliance does not offer • These appliances can play another role • For instance, one may access the address book from the Web tablet and call a person directly from a regular phone • The same, of course, can be done from the JAVA Phone. The personal computer will be able to do the same.

10. Audio PIM • PIM (Personal Information Manager): An application designed to help users organize random bits of information. Although the category is fuzzy, most PIMs enable various kinds of textual notes -- reminders, lists, dates -- and to link these bits of information together in useful ways. Many PIMs also include Calendars, Scheduling, Calculators, and an Address Book.

11. Audio PIM - continued • Currently we support: • Address Book • Calendar • To-Do-List • Message of the day • Support exists for a whole family PIM • Later a personal PIM will be added

12. Audio PIM - continued • Some family members are not used to operating a computer and software • An audio interface makes that less of an obstacle • Audio Input: • Select subsystem • Within a system • Add, Retreive, and Search

13. Audio PIM - continued • Audio Outputs • Message-of-the-day • Items from to-do-list • Search results (I.e., phone number) • Others • We use JAVA Speech API, reference implementation by IBM • Natural language queries translated to SQL

14. Home Energy • Manage home heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system. • The software will work with hardware provided by Residential Control Systems • Full control of thermostats as well as ventilation in different zones for a home. • The system gets feedback from different zones within a home and outdoor information.

15. Home Energy - continued • Feedback, actual energy bills, and temperatures analysis results in the most efficient way to use energy. • The software will provide web accessibility. • Different access levels will be provided, as the system will be incorporated with the personalization aspect of the Home plan.

16. Home Energy - continued • The project has been designed. • A simulation of the hardware has been developed. • At this time most design aspects are being fine-tuned. • Different energy algorithms are investigated and energy loss is computed.

17. Multi-Station and Fault Tolerance • A single computer controlling all features of the Home is problematic. • In multi-floor homes access to Home features should be available on all floors • A failure of the home computer, if only one exists, causes a traumatic experience to the resident. • We suggest a solution to handle faults in the controlling computer.

18. Fault Tolerance - continued • Additional computers IPAQs, Web Tablets, and similar devices connected wirelessly will get periodic updates of essential data required for home functioning. • In the case of a backup computer, it will have the identical software. • In the case of more limited devices such as Web Tablets, such devices will have a smaller version of RM, Personalization and data.

19. Fault Tolerance - continued • Upon failure, a new control computer will be elected and it will take over home support. • Since the infrastructure already exists, access to home services will be available through any of the computing devices at all times.