Sunfleet

Can you program your VCR? Can your mother?

Yesterday I gave a talk at the MIT Symposium on Humans and Technology. The talk before mine was on the topic of simplifying our home technology experience.

Chuck Rich, founding member of MERL's Research Lab, spoke about DiamondHelp, a system for networking and interacting with your home appliances, from your DVD player, to your thermostat, to your washing machine. While the idea of networking these appliances is not new, MERL's contribution is their proposal that the interface to your appliances should support a collaborative dialogue between the user (you or your parent) and the system. While you operate and schedule your devices, you are also able to "chat" with the system about your task and ask questions about what options you have at each step of the interaction. I thought it was a reasonable, and definitely simplifying, approach to deal with our increasingly complex homes.

Chuck mentioned the following related research and development: