Our five categories:

energyEfficiency - makes The Home Depot Smart Home environmentally responsible.  The Home Depot Smart Home uses less energy, less water, and produces less waste than a traditional home.

safetyHealth - With one of the nation’s finest Biomedical Engineering Programs and hospitals, The Home Depot Smart Home joins health care with the way people live their daily lives.

autoAutomation - what puts the “Smart” in The Home Depot Smart Home.  Intelligent systems help the house run with less human intervention.

entEntertainment -The Home Depot Smart Home has a dedicated media lab to create a totally immersive, state of the art media experience.

cool
Cool Factor - projects focus on technical challenges too irresistible for an engineer to ignore.

 

cool factor Projects

Facial Recognition [project page]

In order to adequately determine the identity and location of a person in The Home Depot Smart Home, in-house security cameras perform face recognition analysis. Students have experimented with both Lowe’s SIFT algorithm and Intel’s OpenCV library as references for first identifying a face in a room and then determining the identity of that person. Light and viewing angle were the main system constraints, and the team dealt with issues such as data bandwidth, system reliability, and privacy concerns.

RFID Technology [project page]

Coupled with face recognition technology, radio frequency identification will be used to track users throughout the house and store preferences for automated room temperature, media, lighting, and security control on an individual level.

Retractable Roof [project page]

The roof above our courtyard will contain a retractable skylight that can by opened or closed as desired. The action of the skylight will be controlled by a computer program that has access to internal and external environmental conditions information. The roof will provide research opportunities with daylighting, airflow and indoor air quality

Biometrics and Security [project page]

Biometrics involves using some aspect of the body as a form of identification. Biometrics has not yet gotten widespread use in home systems, but it is still regarded as a generally safe, difficult (though not impossible) to break system. The Biometrics and Security team was primarily involved with two projects. We first did some research about how some different biometrics devices work, such as fingerprint recognition and face recognition.

Accessibility in The Home Depot Smart Home - ADA [project page]

Universal design promotes “products and environments usable by all people to the greatest extent possible without the need for adaptation or specialized design.” Research will address the problem of second floor accessibility alternatives to an elevator, new audible and visual components of systems, adjustable and rotating counters and shelves, front loading and accessible machines, and heights of equipment.

Security [project page]

Moving beyond traditional lock and key for building access technologies in The Home Depot Smart Home may advance the science of keyless entry and biometric identification. Fingerprint scanners offer versatility, security, cost-effectiveness, reliability, customizability, and cutting-edge technology. Identification via hand-print geometry or iris scanning is neither feasible nor cost-effective for our purposes.

Structural Monitoring [project page]

Fiber optic strands and acoustic emission sensors throughout the structure and foundation will detect any movement, cracks or breaks over time. This system will also allow for research which compares humidity and moisture levels with structural settlement changes.