Just a Smart Home or Your Smart Home – A Framework for Personalized User Interfaces Based on Eclipse Smart Home and Universal Remote Console

Abstract

In the last few years substantial progress has been made in smart home technologies, and promises to support and assist us in our daily life are higher than ever. This holds not only for regular users but also for people with special needs such as the elderly and people with disabilities. The appropriate design of smart homes can enable a more independent life for these users and can give them the chance to stay in their familiar environment for a longer period of time. Hence, the smart home concept can play an important role when addressing the demographic change that is present in most industrial countries. However, although technologies seem to be advanced and the expected benefits are high, a wide-spread adoption has not yet taken place. There are various reasons for this situation. Among them, the lack of appropriate user interfaces for the heterogeneous user group of future smart homes and the problem of low interoperability between different smart home systems can be mentioned. Two platforms addressing these problems are the Eclipse Smart Home (ESH) project and the Universal Remote Console (URC). ESH focuses on the integration of different device and back-end technologies; URC provides a personalized, pluggable user interface. This paper analyzes the similarities and differences between the two systems. As a result of the analysis, a concept for integrating the ideas of URC into the ESH project is proposed. This concept is a first step towards a platform for personalized user interfaces in the Smart Home and Ambient Assisted Living domain.