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“Connected living” is a concept that has undergone substantial evolution in recent years. Remember the first attempts to create an ecosystem of household appliances connected to the Internet and capable of talking to each other and exchanging information with each other, with a hub (the TV, the refrigerator, the smart speakers, the smartphone with the inevitable app) responsible for managing them in a centralized way the operation? Well, that concept has been rewritten with artificial intelligence, a technology increasingly integrated into the heart of all devices and which will dictate the times and ways of connected life inside the home.
The vision of Samsung, one of the brands that has been playing the smart home game for the longest time (and perhaps with greater conviction), can be taken as a reference to concretely explain this evolution: algorithms and sensors come into play to extend life of household appliances and to make them increasingly less demanding in terms of energy consumption, not surprisingly indicated as the first parameter of choice for purchasing a refrigerator in Italy.
Artificial intelligence therefore adds efficiency by operating at both a software and hardware level and the data that fuels life inside the smart home is processed in the cloud, with the aim of not burdening it (also from a cost point of view). In the case of Samsung – but the reasoning applies to all the players in this sector, from big brands like Haier, Siemens or Lg to home automation specialists like Bticino or the Treviso-based Nice – the idea behind the SmartThings platform and the related app (around 290 million registered users worldwide) and the family of Bespoke AI household appliances is precisely this: simplifying the management of all connected appliances and taking advantage of all accessible touch screens (that of the telephone, but also the integrated ones in the refrigerator or induction hob) to have a real-time view of all the smart elements with the possibility of managing their control with a click, in different points of the house.
Having said that the security of the data produced and exchanged by devices on the network and in the cloud is an indispensable part of the transition to the era of interconnected appliances guided by artificial intelligence, we cannot therefore forget the most important game that manufacturers and techs have to play provider of the smart home, that of interoperability. Last October, version 1.2 of the “universal” communication protocol Matter was released and with the increase in the number of compatible devices on the market there is no doubt that a new step forward is being taken towards a truly open and flexible.
In fact, refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers and air conditioners are gradually being added to thermostats and light bulbs, not to mention that the wave of the new release can also be ridden by robot vacuum cleaners, smoke detection systems and air purifiers. “Matter – explained Matteo Trambaiolo, Head of Marketing & Business Planning Home Appliances of Samsung Electronics Italia – is a work in progress on the path to total compatibility between devices and close collaboration with Bosch to make our appliances communicate with their devices. precisely in this direction”. The feeling is that, on the user side, it will still take some time to reap the benefits of a truly interoperable ecosystem of connected appliances, and it will probably not be generative artificial intelligence that will accelerate this process. The applications of Gen AI are in fact limited for the moment, and it is difficult to think that these tools will soon constitute the killer app of the smart home of tomorrow, although Samsung itself is of the idea that its Bixby voice assistant will become a key element for interact with appliances at a more advanced level.