Keywords

1 Introduction

The “smart” house or Smart Built Environment (SBE) augments a traditional home by adapting new technology. The technology is adapted into the existing patterns of use with a rich computational and communicational infrastructure. This infrastructure incorporates smart objects, devices and sensors that observe the built environment and interact with the inhabitants in novel ways [1]. However, the physical and social structures within a home are subject to continuous changes that create the need for reconfigurable spaces and places in SBEs. Dourish emphasizes the difference between space and place, defining place as space with added socio-cultural understandings that frames behavior [2].

The concept of Internet of Things (IoT) describes the pervasive presence of things or objects that interact and cooperate with each other to reach common goals. IoT provides sensing, communication, computing, and actuation infrastructure for ubiquitous interactions and pervasive services. Sensors, actuators, and services distributed across the spaces and places need to collaborate with each other and render adaptive behaviors to changing environmental and functional contexts of the spaces and places for their reconfigurability.

These physical smart objects have a social existence that could be supported through the IoT (an Internet of social things) [3]. Designing and deploying IoT infrastructure into SBEs provides capabilities that can change how systems behave and how users interact with them. Such SBEs enhanced with technology can improve the lives of individuals, groups, and the broader community.

We describe a preliminary work on a service-based framework that identifies and supports reconfiguration capabilities in SBEs. The layered architecture provides access to the reconfigurable smart objects, integrates environmental and biometric data and identifies the patterns of user activities and behavior.

2 Reconfigurable Spaces and Places

Reconfigurable IoT-based SBEs [4] can provide significant benefits by enabling mobile, flexible and collaborative spaces. Such SBEs can include reconfigurable social spaces for dining, entertaining or other activities. Reconfigurable SBEs include reconfigurable,mobile furniture pieces that can adjust to the changing floor plan and room sizes. While that has been an ongoing trend for office spaces, it is now becoming more relevant for residential spaces, especially for smaller apartments and houses. This new opportunities and capabilities of architecture and built spaces brings new challenges in terms of user experience and interaction design [5].

As an example, robotic buildings robots can perform tasks of physical and sensorial reconfiguration to support behaviors ranging from responsive to interactive [5]. The challenge is how to incorporate adaptivity, spatial and functional reconfigurability within SBEs and provide it as services across the multiple time scales (e.g., seasonal, daily, ad-hoc).

In an adaptive architecture feedback loop, an SBE gathers data from inhabitants and uses them to inform actuations of architectural elements to change the SBE thus providing a feedback to inhabitants [6]. The enactive approach to architectural experience in underlined by sense-making, constitutive relatedness, and embodied action [7]. An inhabitant is embedded in a specific architectural context and extends the body in to the physical space through human senses [8]. Architectural thinking has to be combined with interactive technologies to design interactive SBEs from an architectural point of view [9].

Household members interactions are expressed through sequences of practical actions that identify domestic routines and communications [10]. Such communications must be considered for design and the deployment of new computing devices and applications in the home [11]. Usability of end-user composition interfaces for SBEs play an important role in safety consideration.

Some of the factors include predictability of composition model, readability of composition representation, overview and means for planning compositions, and attractiveness and desirability [12]. When dealing with smart things like smart appliances, usefulness is the strongest predictors for the intention to use. However, the emotional response is also an important explanatory variable that can be used to inform the safety features.

Mobile robotics can be applied to create automated, self-moving furniture components that can be controlled, coordinated and configured based on the actions taking place in SBEs [13]. An example of a self-reconfiguring modular robotic system are Roombots that can move in their environment and that change shape and functionality during the day [14]. Some of the features that characterize mobile robots are reconfiguration, docking, degrees of freedom, locomotion, control, communications, size, and powering [15].

3 Framework

We build on our work on the design of interaction independence middleware and context sensitive interaction interoperability frameworks, and a service infrastructure for human-centered IoT-based SBEs [16] to define a layered service architecture for the reconfigurable SBEs. The IoT layer provides connectivity and communication to embedded devices, sensors and actuators. The data layer provides data collection and fusion. The energy layer supports energy analysis and management for ad-hoc and periodic activities (daily, seasonal) (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Service framework: The lower three layers mange the data collection and overall energy consumption (sustainability). The upper two layers provide reconfiguration services that can be triggered automatically or by inhabitants’ requests.

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The configuration layer allows inhabitants to manage the space configuration and overall comfort settings. Finally, the UI layer supports multi-modal interactions across variety of interface and interaction devices in SBEs. The service management subsystem manages the service lifecycle and deals with reconfiguration and conflict resolution, context awareness, behavior detection and safety/security/privacy issues.

Figure 2 illustrates a simple simulation of a reconfiguration service in an SBE. The SBE recognizes a pattern of daily social activities (e.g., a family time) and changes the space configuration (i.e., room sizes) by moving (sliding) the wall. The corresponding interior reconfiguration takes place by rearranging the smart mobile furniture pieces. Providing the occupancy data and related services enables addressing the inhabitants’s safety in a reconfigurable, dynamic physical space.

Fig. 2.
figure 2

Reconfigurable space and place. Left: A default configuration for a living room and a bedroom. Right: A reconfiguration for the a social activities that take place in the living room. The wall between the bedroom and the living room moves thus increasing the size of the living room at the bedroom’s expense. The interior design (furniture arrangement) changes accordingly.

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While there is an emerging emphasis on IoT security, the safety aspects are not yet addressed at the same level. Therefore, we are investigating the safety requirements and the corresponding security implications. For example, a movement of an automated door, wall or furniture piece can result in almost instantaneous injury. The safety requirements apply not only to the inhabitants but also to the SBE they live in. Due to mobility and reconfigurability of SBE components, it is possible to cause damage to the SBE.

Since reconfigurable SBEs are distributed, “multi-robotics” systems with autonomous mobile components, the framework must provide real-time obstacles (inhabitants, SBE damage) avoidance services in the SBE’s physical space and state space.

Implementing an IoT-based SBE involves interconnecting a variety of devices, some of which with limited resources, through a communication network. We use the MQTT protocol as representative communication protocol for the IoT layer. The collected data is stored in the OSIsoft PI system data infrastructure (data layer) to support energy analysis and activity monitoring (energy layer). The configuration layer facilitates proactive decision making with real-time access and visualization of data (reconfiguration services).

We created an example that models SBE safety in a simulated small physical environment (Fig. 2). The example is based on an SBE prototype currently under construction. The SBE prototype includes several movable walls, actuated doors, drawers, etc. We are using it to test and iteratively develop the preliminary service-based framework to support reconfigurable SBE.

4 Conclusion

We presented some challenges faced by IoT-based SBEs related to the design and implementation of reconfigurable spaces and places. A preliminary service-based framework is described and illustrated using a simple example. The ongoing development of a reconfigurable SBE (a smart home) will provide ground truth and allow for iterative improvements of the service framework based on the real-world testing.