Smart homes

‘Roll up! Roll up! Gather round, ladies and gentlemen, to gaze in wonder at… [dramatic sci-fi voice] the home of the future!’

Let your minds wander through a cosmopolitan landscape filled with driverless cars and solar-panelled, robot-enabled smart homes. Voice-activated holograms that appear by simply shouting, “OK housing!” at the microphones embedded into the walls.

Smart thermostats talking to your other household appliances. Retina-scanning door-locks. Smart watches monitoring the health and well-being of elderly or vulnerable residents. Video-enabled drones carrying out pro-active repairs before you even know there is anything wrong. All of this will of course be controlled by a social well-being robot who lives in your kitchen. He’s called Dave and he can tell when you’re in a bad mood.

The housing sector has not been innovative; usually waiting until technology is proven, safe and trusted before implementing.

This smart home could be yours, folks! In fact, it nearly is…

Do you think the concept of the internet of things or the connected home is fanciful? Is it a far-fetched dream of people with their head in the (ahem) cloud? Well, I can officially confirm that nearly all of the above will be commonplace in the near future. Fact.

It’s a fact because as consumer-driven technological advancements are made, greater technological expectations are put on the housing sector. We can’t go backwards and we can’t stand still…

As well as consumers (including tenants), you also have to thank the creative minds at companies like Google and Apple; their forward thinking has now filtered through to the housing sector and allowed for creative individuals to be employed in key roles. More importantly, this now allows landlords the freedom to be inventive and creative for the good of their tenants – without fear of failure.

There is of course a fine line to tread when developing technology essentially using tenants’ money. If, for example, you were to start using holograms, drones and robots, then you better be able to justify the value of these seemingly exotic technological advancements to your tenants.

What you don’t want to hear is, ‘You can’t fix my sink but you can send a drone to check on my roof.’ That’s the challenge and the reason that creative technologists are vital to our sector. It’s not that easy coming up with truly viable, efficient, cost-saving tech solutions that tenants will embrace.

Companies renowned as being innovative often do not create concepts from scratch but rather innovate, take technology and bend it to meet their needs. Most of the tech mentioned in this article is already available to consumers in one form or another, so the full smart home really is just a stone’s throw away from becoming reality. It’s just a matter of connecting existing technology into one sustainable package we can then call ‘the smart social home’.

Massive companies like Samsung and Panasonic are already knee-deep into the world of smart home technology. It’s just up to the housing sector to grab it and use it in new innovative ways for the benefit of their tenants.

Historically (and I realise this is a generalisation) the housing sector has not been innovative; usually waiting until technology is proven, safe and trusted before implementing.

That’s not always a bad thing, but we are in an excellent position to develop smart social homes that will truly improve our tenants’ lives, so let’s not get left behind on this one. If we don’t take a front seat in the development of the smart social home, we will be doing nothing to dispel the stigma attached to the housing sector as old-fashioned and unwilling to change.

Our homes are going to get smart whether we like it or not, so let’s get smart along with them.

Adam Rigg, new media and channel specialist, Red Kite Community Housing