It’s sci-fi, occasionally creepy, and sometimes doesn’t work.
The security cameras recognise a spouse or friend by name, a tracker monitors the baby’s breathing and the Facebook founder’s voice could control most things in a quiet room.
Of course, it can take a while to warm consumers up to the idea of recording video of each family member. “People here say it’s going to break up a lot of marriages,” says Daniel Vazquez, a spokesman for the French firm Netatmo, which sells just such a facial recognition camera.
Zuckerberg made headlines this week when he announced his 2016 resolution was to build an artificial intelligence butler that could do all of this and more for his homes. It would be modelled, he said, on Tony Stark’s virtual butler, Jarvis, in the Iron Man movies.
A wander through the technology industry’s main convention, the Consumer Electronics Show, this week in Las Vegas offers a taste of what this kind of living would look like, if technology firms can work out some of the kinks.
It’s indicative of the so-called smart home industry, which expected to take in $1.2bn this year and move 8.9m units, up 21% from last year, the Consumer Technology Association said this week. Companies advertise living spaces out of science fiction movies, but still haven’t sold regular consumers on the idea that it’s something they need.
Samsung was mocked by some this week after it unveiled a smart fridge on stage here. It features a giant touchscreen that lets people check how much orange juice they have left and order more through a website. Other companies pitch countless products that let consumers control appliances from their smartphones, no matter how far away they may be.
“Who really cares about turning on my crockpot?” said Vincent Reapor, a senior product marketing manager at Swann Communications USA, who is pitching his company’s smart home security systems this year at CES.
Security
Swann is running focus groups to figure out how to convince consumers they need to buy its gadgets, which include smart locks, smart doorbells and smart cameras.In his New Year’s post, Zuckerberg said he sought a smart door that would recognise a friend and let them into his house. Swann would get him part of the way there, with an outside camera that should let users unlock a door for a guest remotely from their phone, though it didn’t work in a demonstration here.
Netatmo came to Las Vegas this week selling a camera that in “three days tops” will learn the face of “your children or elderly parents” and alert you when they are home, says Vazquez. It costs $200 but doesn’t work outside.
The camera does have a privacy feature that disables recordings for certain people.
Childcare
Zuckerberg also said he’d like his virtual butler to be a virtual nannie who could keep an eye on his newborn daughter, Max. Radio-wave audio baby monitors have existed for decades, but don’t do much for parents when a child is quiet.Enter Rest Devices Inc.
The Boston-based firm started by former students of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sells a tiny plastic turtle that when attached to a special jumper, can monitor a child’s breathing and skin temperature. “The turtle is actually just too large to be a choking hazard,” said Rest Devices chief technology officer Thomas Lipoma.
The idea is parents can compare their baby’s sleeping habits to other babies donning the turtle. Why a turtle? “There’s no gender association with it,” Lipoma said.
Home Control
Lastly, Zuckerberg wants all these systems and others to talk to each other as well as be controllable by his voice. This would let him boost the heater, dim the lights or blast Green Day, one of his favorite bands according to a 2010 New Yorker profile.And that’s the tricky part. No one company at CES seems to have figured out how to make all of its products work with others to create the perfect science-fiction super butler.
By: Danny Yadron.
Review: Emerging Market Formulations & Research Unit, Flagship Records.
For The #FacebookTeam