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Smart Medical Home in Rochester (www.futurehealth.rochester.edu)

The Center's overall goal is to develop an integrated Personal Health System, so all technologies are integrated and work seamlessly. This technology will allow consumers, in the privacy of their own homes, to maintain health, detect the onset of disease, and manage disease. The data collected 24/7 inside the home will augment the data collected by physicians and hospitals. The data collection modules in the home will start with the measurement of traditional vital signs (blood pressure, pulse, respiration) and work to include measurement of "new vital signs", such as gait, behavior patterns, sleep patterns, general exercise, rehabilitation exercises, and more. This five-room "house" is outfitted with infrared sensors, computers, biosensors, and video cameras for use by research teams to work with research subjects as they test concepts and prototype products.

PlaceLab in Cambridge, Massachusetts (web.media.mit.edu/)

PlaceLab is a "living laboratory" for the study of ubiquitous technologies in home settings. The PlaceLab is a tool for researchers developing context-aware and ubiquitous interaction technologies. It complements more traditional data gathering instruments and methods, such as home ethnography and laboratory studies. The PlaceLab facility, which is located in a residential condominium building within a Cambridge, MA neighborhood. PlaceLab opened in July 2004. The 1000 square foot lab consists of a living room, dining area, kitchen, small office, bedroom, full bath and half bath. Participants for three pilot PlaceLab stays of 10 days were engaged: Activity recognition, Activity recall and Dietary report protocol.

Aware Home in Georgia (awarehome.imtc.gatech.edu)

Technology will revolutionize the tools that are used in the home of the near future. Embedded computing, sensing and actuation technologies-coupled with new infrastructure in the built environment itself-will combine to enable new opportunities to support the work of the home. Taking fullest advantage of these opportunities requires that we understand both the base technology on which these new tools will be built, as well as the domestic setting in which they will be used.
For example, robots are one category of home tools that people will likely increasingly purchase for their homes. However, to date very little is known about how to design robotic products that fit into the home, do meaningful work there, and are desirable to own. These are critical questions to answer if we are going to design usable and useful home tools for the future. Understanding how current home tools (including devices such as the iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner) fit into the work of the home can shed light on how to design the next generation of domestic robots. Such understanding can also inform the creation of new low-level technologies that can be built into tools, or into the home infrastructure itself.

Some possible outputs of the research include:

• Integrate a collection of digital home improvement tools, including stud finder, tape measure, and color detector, into a mobile telephony platform
• Prototype systems to automatically control curtains and blinds to save electric and other energy costs while maintaining optimal lighting for a room
• Empirical studies and analysis to understand the role of new technologies in the home and how homeowners desire these technologies to fit into domestic practices
• New core infrastructure technology that could be applied to a range of applications, such as self-powered wireless sensors or low-cost location detection mechanisms that are suitable for deployment in the home
• New sensing technologies and algorithms appropriate for home robotics applications

Extended Family Residences Model in Oatfield Estates, Milwaukie (www.elite-care.com)

Elite Care aims to enhance community based care through an integrated monitoring and electronic documentation system developed by Elite Care Technologies (ECT), a related software development company. There are installed similar systems in three other facilities elsewhere in the United States. Elite Care is designed to be home-like, elder directed and support aging in place. The six-acre campus holds six houses, each with 12 to 15 residents. "Aging in place" is a real aim. Residents of mixed ability levels live in each house so, for example, couples can continue living together in spite of varying needs, and individuals can stay in their new home, even as their needs change over time.

The ECT system is meant to emulate the intimate knowledge that family caregivers would have of the loved they cared for at home. It consists of simple components. Residents and staff members carry a badge that emits radio-frequency and infrared signals picked up by sensors stationed around the campus. Load cells installed under each bed continuously monitor every resident's weight, a critical health factor. Analysis of this data provides trends in weight, time spent in bed, rising and sleeping time, and restlessness while in bed. All sensors are integrated with an alert system so that staff can be summoned when events take place that might cause concern.

With Oatfield Estates serving as a living laboratory, it was discovered which information was useful to management, staff and family members. Today the focus is on the user interface and the interpretation of information. In order to make alert signals helpful, a user-friendly interface was needed so that nurses and managers could easily adjust and set the parameters of the alerts to meet a resident's changing needs. A wireless "help" button that residents and staff wear, allows community members to call for help from any house on campus, thereby providing freedom of mobility. Easy access to data showing where any resident is located is available to staff via a secure Web portal and allows staff members to support disoriented residents in an open environment without seeming to hover over them.

Microsoft Home in Redmond (seattlepi.nwsource.com)

A new version of the futuristic Microsoft Home lets people use mobile phones to control room lighting, temperature, music, television and other parts of the house - all the way down to the lock on the front door. It becomes kind of the ultimate universal remote control. That's one of the central concepts inside the revamped Microsoft Home, a series of rooms filled with working prototypes and technology concepts that the company considers five to 10 years from hitting the market. Microsoft established the facility 1994, and it was unveiling the latest remodel 2006.

The current version is notable in part for its lack of desktop computers - the machines on which the company originally built its business. Instead, there's a touch-sensitive Tablet PC in the play area, a big-screen Media Center PC in the living room, and a backlit control panel in the entryway wall. A technology that intelligently prioritizes messages and alerts to determine whether they should be delivered at any given time grew out of the work of Microsoft Research's Adaptive Systems and Interaction group. Other prototypes build on existing Microsoft products. For example, the television is a futuristic version of Microsoft's existing Media Center software. To avoid media overload, the TV can be adjusted to present selected choices, based on the situation and upcoming events.

The Microsoft Home isn't open to the public, but is available for the company's employees, customers and others to tour by appointment. The goal of the facility is to give those visitors a tangible sense for where the company believes consumer technology is headed.

Detroit (Internet Home Alliance), "OnStar at Home" (www.internethomealliance.com)

Die Internet Home Alliance startete den "OnStar at Home" Pilotversuch Anfang 2002 und führte ihn bis Dezember des gleichen Jahres. Das Konsortium, geführt durch OnStar, Invensys, Panasonic, Hewlett-Packard and ADT Security Services, fokussierte auf die Integration von OnStar's virtual Advisor service mit Haussicherheits-, Kontroll- und Telekommunikationskomponenten von Invensys, Panasonic und ADT.

Im Versuch wurden 71 Haushalte in Detroit mit einem leicht zu bedienenden Interface zur Kontrolle von Haussystemen wie Beleuchtung, Heizung und Sicherheit ausgestattet. Zusätzlich konnten die Bewohner mit OnStar's Personal Calling Service (PCS) ihr Haus auch über jeden PC, Telefon, WAP oder WLAN-PDA steuern.Das System wurde in den einzelnen Versuchshaushalten für die Dauer von mindestens 4 Monaten installiert.