Our Program
The Duke Smart Home Program is a research-based approach to smart living sponsored by the Pratt School of Engineering. Primarily focused on undergraduates, the program encourages students from different academic disciplines to form teams and explore smart ways to use technology in the home. The emphasis on 'smart' means finding the best technology answer for a particular problem--not just finding the high tech solution or the latest gadget on the market. This approach naturally leads students to identify 'gaps' in the marketplace--problems that just aren't being addressed through commercially available technology. These gaps then become the basis for exploration.
The Duke Smart Home Program encompasses a 6,000 sq. ft. residential dorm and research laboratory called the The Home Depot Smart Home; a thriving student club of Duke students who explore smart home technology design and prototyping (some projects are directly related to the dorm), a growing core of faculty who conduct research that parallels the goals of the Duke Smart Home Program, and an enthusiastic community of members of industry who see this program as a unique way to cultivate the next generation of employees and to augment their own comsumer technology R&D efforts.
We hope to see sustainable living research at Duke continue expand to include students from all disciplines of academic study. In addition, we hope to stimulate faculty across Duke to participate in research focused on technology adoption, energy efficiency, and environmental sustainability.
The Duke Smart Home Program fosters strong relationships with industry through collaborative projects, tours and interviews, guest lectures and internships. We hope to not only strengthen the market for integrated technology, but to also help homeowners make their own ideas for smart home a reality. The central concept of this project is our belief that smart homes can improve that quality of life for people of all ages and incomes.
The Duke Smart Home Program provides students with outlets for:
- Hands-on technology exploration and optimization,
- Project management, team building and design experience,
- the study of technology adoption and design refinement,
- the study of product marketability, economics and practical engineering aspects of product design, and
- exploring the gap between commercial versus consumer technology and shaping the future of smart residential living.
Benefits of the Duke Smart Home Program
Provide Practical Design Experience - One of the biggest challenges for universities is involving students in hands-on engineering experiences early in the curriculum. Design and application of design is the most fundamental skill of engineering, yet at many universities, exposure to design is often limited until senior year. Multiple Duke engineering classes already are using data from the various The Home Depot Smart Home projects to teach students in tangible ways.
Project Management and Communications Experience - Students in the program hold responsibility for creating their own project proposals and managing project teams as well as interacting with corporations. Students gain valuable experience in project management, budgeting, and communication in addition to the technical skills of engineering research and design.
Exposure to Cross-disciplinary teamwork - The Home Depot Smart Home project is inherently cross-disciplinary--incorporating civil and environmental engineering, electrical and computer engineering, materials science and mechanical engineering and even biomedical engineering. The project also draws on computer science, environmental science and human factors disciplines. Project teams are specifically designed to bridge the gap across the disciplines and give students exposure and experience in field outside their own specialties. With all these disciplines involved, student teams gain a unique support network unavailable to most entrepreneurs and we believe this will promote the future success of our students.
Intellectual Property Awareness - This project increases intellectual property awareness on campus and serves as an invaluable resource for those wanting to prepare themselves for the technical world of product design and development. Whereas major corporations prefer to put on expensive shows to convince consumers to buy their products, we take a different approach, educating the engineer before the consumer. The Home Depot Smart Home is a living laboratory for useful products and designs that may ultimately result in patents and publications of research for the university.
University/Industry Test Bed - The Home Depot Smart Home has the potential to be a powerful test bed for marketable university and industry derived technologies. With 10 students living in and monitoring all actions of the house, The Home Depot Smart Home becomes an effective venue for driving change in the marketplace. Testing designs and optimizing systems in The Home Depot Smart Home environment will be a major component of research. By remaining small, the house also has the added advantage of being flexible in design and operation. Successes and failures on this scale will be extremely beneficial to the university at a minimum cost risk.
Corporate Relations - The Home Depot Smart Home program is already serving as a bridge between academia and industry, bringing to campus corporate interest in the high tech community that will lead to future sponsorships and partnerships. In addition, an industry-relevant education is the best thing we can provide for our students. Through The Home Depot Smart Home industry relationships, students will have new opportunities for internships, mentoring and future employment.
Community Relations - We hope The Home Depot Smart Home will serve as a new forum for community outreach and education. Among the various methods of community outreach will be technology seminars, The Home Depot Smart Home tours, publications and learning opportunities via the web site. We hope to help homeowners make sound decisions, and make their own dream of a smart home a reality.