The State of Smart Home Technology in 2019

Written by Brooks Canavesi on May 10, 2019. Posted in Blog, IoT

With the number of smart home devices available to consumers increasing at a rapid pace, now is a good time to take a closer look at the state of smart home technology to see whether it delivers the convenience, cost savings, and comfort we’ve been promised.

1. The Global Smart Home Market Continues to Grow

According to a recent report published by Research and Markets, the overall smart home market is expected to grow from $76.6 billion in 2018 to $151.4 billion by 2024, at a CAGR of 12.02 percent. At seven billion devices in 2018, the connected home is the largest IoT segment, followed by industrial and connected health. The factors driving the growth of the smart home market include the need for energy-saving and low carbon emission solutions, the increasing awareness of the benefits of smart home technology, or the demand for home monitoring from remote locations, just give a few examples. While North America currently accounts for the largest share of the global smart home market, the demand for smart home devices is expected to grow at the highest rate in the Asia-Pacific region during the forecast period, thanks to its booming middle class. The State of the Connected Home report by techUK, which surveyed 1,000 UK customers, states that smart TVs are the most popular smart home products, followed by smart lighting and thermostats, smart health devices, smart security systems, and smart domestic appliances. Even though 74 percent of consumers are already familiar with smart home technology, only 37 percent find it appealing, which confirms that there’s still a lot of room for the smart home market to grow. Smart appliances are the least appealing category of smart home products, likely due to their high prices and limited usefulness.

2. Robots Are Not Just for Industrial Application

We’ve become used to seeing industrial robots assemble cars, weld unwieldy chunks of metal, and solder circuit boards with the precision and dexterity of a master craftsman and the speed of Dash from The Incredibles. In 2019, we’re starting to see robots leave the cold, metal walls of warehouses and factories and venture into our homes. Not many families are ready to spend $3,000 on the Sony Aibo, a robotic pet dog with lifelike expressions and a dynamic array of movements, or $5,500 on the Groove X companion robot pet, but the demand for sociable robots that could give comfort to the elderly is much greater. “With more and more people forced to look after loved ones, the internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) can help alleviate the social care issues raised by an aging population,” argues Emanuele Angelidis, chief executive of IoT investor Breed Reply. “IoT also enables real-time remote monitoring so caregivers can keep a close and careful eye on their loved ones, while they complete other tasks like shopping, or simply go about their day-to-day lives.” Mobile robot solutions like Temi, a self-navigating personal robot with a large built-in touchscreen, makes it possible for caregivers and family members to give comfort and assistance in a way that’s not possible with a fixed camera. It’s only a matter of time before similar robots become so affordable that social care providers will be able to buy them in bulk and use them to enhance the quality of their service.

3. Emotional AI Is Getting Better

Gartner believes that by 2020 personal devices will know more about an individual’s emotional state than his or her own family. Emotion AI systems and affective computing are allowing everyday objects to detect, analyze, process and respond to people’s emotional states and moods to provide better context and a more personalized experience,” says Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner. The aim of emotional AI is to automate objective measurement of opinions, feelings, and behaviors, and it relies on natural language processing (NLP), natural language understanding (NLU) and the detection of facial expressions of emotion to achieve its goal. Smart home devices equipped with emotional AI could prove indispensable in patient care, interacting with patients on an emotional level just like humans do and providing companionship and times of stress. At the same time, emotional AI has the potential to make smart home devices more approachable, easier to use, and, above all, more personal. Smart home assistants, such as the Amazon Echo devices and Google Home, have become very popular in recent years, and the ability to recognize the mood of the person the speaker is interacting with and respond accordingly would create many new possible use cases.

4. 802.11ax Is Coming

Labeled Wi-Fi 6 by Wi-Fi Alliance, 802.11ax is the next-generation Wi-Fi standard, and it’s expected to be the next big thing in the connected home. In 2019, there are already several 802.11ax-compatible routers to choose from, and many more will be released by the end of the year. What makes 802.11ax such a game changer is the fact that it solves the problem of Wi-Fi congestion, which plagues most households with multiple internet-connected devices trying to send and receive data at the same time, by introducing something called orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA). OFDMA is a technique for transmitting large amounts of digital data over a noisy channel, and it works by splitting the signal into multiple smaller sub-signals which are then transmitted at a lower data rate simultaneously at different frequencies. 802.11ax additionally adds uplink direction for MIMO and MU-MIMO to increase throughput, and it increases how many MU-MIMO transmissions can happen at the same time to eight, from four with 802.11ac. Although mass adoption of 802.11ax probably won’t happen until 2020, what’s important is that all major Wi-Fi chip vendors have already either announced or released 802.11ax chips. Because 802.11ax is backward compatible with previous Wi-Fi specifications, its adoption can happen gradually over time and with no negative impact on consumers.

5. True Wireless Charging Is Almost Ready for Prime Time

At the end of 2018, the Federal Communications Commission certified Energous’s WattUp technology, which can convert electricity into radio frequencies and then send the resulting energy to devices up to three feet away. “Older wireless charging technologies have received limited adoption over the past 15 years and are confined to contact-based charging only. The FCC certification of Energous’ power-at-a-distance wireless charging transmitter is a major market milestone,” says Stephen R. Rizzone, Energous president and CEO. True wireless charging is exactly what consumers have been waiting for, and it’s exactly what can make smart home devices more usable. Currently, consumers who decide to fit their homes with smart sensors, such as door and window sensors, motion sensors, water leak detectors, or smart locks, are forced to deal with the fact that such sensor can rarely last more than a year or two without a new battery. That may not be such a big deal when dealing with just a few sensors, but it’s likely that the homes of the future will be fitted with hundreds of wireless sensors and actuators, monitoring and controlling everything from temperature, proximity, water and air quality, and so much more. True wireless charging technology like Energous’s WattUp has the potential to make manual battery replacements a thing of the past, and it will likely be one of the big smart home technology stories in 2019.

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