{"id":340436,"date":"2017-05-09T17:54:59","date_gmt":"2017-05-09T09:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1487016"},"modified":"2017-05-09T17:54:59","modified_gmt":"2017-05-09T09:54:59","slug":"how-a-tap-could-tame-the-smart-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/how-a-tap-could-tame-the-smart-home\/","title":{"rendered":"How a tap could tame the smart home"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Here\u2019s a novel fix for the headache of interacting with\u00a0all sorts of\u00a0connected devices: researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have devised a system that lets smartphone users tap their phone\u00a0against an IoT device in order to have a contextual menu automatically loaded on screen \u2014 thereby saving them from having to scramble around looking for the correct app to control each\u00a0device. Or fiddling with actual physical buttons and trying to navigate less consumer friendly menus.<\/p>\n

So, in other words,\u00a0\u201cno more scrolling through endless pages of apps on your phone to control with your supposed \u2018smart home’\u201d, as CMU researcher Chris Harrison puts it.<\/p>\n

The system, called Deus EM-Machina (see what they did there?), leverages\u00a0the fact that\u00a0electromagnetic noise is emitted from everyday electrical objects to power a device classifier \u2014 they\u2019re using\u00a0a smartphone kitted out with an EM-sensor that can detect what IoT device it\u2019s resting on \u2014 enabling\u00a0contextual functionality to be pushed to\u00a0the smartphone screen so it can be a dynamic\u00a0control device.<\/p>\n

And while researchers at CMU\u2019s Future Interfaces Group have\u00a0previously shown<\/a> a similar electromagnetic sensing system running on a\u00a0wearable device \u2014 also for powering contextual awareness of other\u00a0devices \u2014 the use of a smartphone as the control device in this\u00a0latest research\u00a0scenario means\u00a0richer menus can\u00a0be made available to users, allowing more control functions to be supported.<\/p>\n

Introducing the research in a\u00a0paper<\/a>\u00a0they write:<\/p>\n

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We propose an approach where users simply tap a smartphone to an appliance to discover and rapidly utilize contextual functionality. To achieve this, our prototype smartphone recognizes physical contact with uninstrumented appliances, and summons appliance-specific interfaces. Our user study suggests high accuracy \u2013 98.8% recognition accuracy among 17 appliances. Finally, to underscore the immediate feasibility and utility of our system, we built twelve example applications, including six fully functional end-to-end demonstrations<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Examples of the apps the researchers built to demonstrate the sensing system\u00a0are shown in the below video \u2014 including controlling a thermostat; configuring\u00a0a router; printing a document that\u2019s on screen on the mobile device with a single print button push; sending text from a mobile to a desktop computer; and more.<\/p>\n