A long, long way from motorised cupboards

"Dishwashing chores will be a pleasure, especially when this ultrasonic dishwasher does the job." So said the 1957 TV advert from Monsanto Chemical Company attempting to sell the possibilities of the "house of the future" to the American public.

Alongside the kitchen that called you when your cake was finished baking, Monsanto had created “recipe disks” showing what a finished dish should look like. There were motorised cupboards and toilets which lowered or raised depending on the height of who was using them.

"Well, the dishwasher would likely have been safe for the user as they do ultrasonic scans of babies these days," says Richard Scarfe, senior marketing innovation manager at Adastral Park, BT's global research and development campus, based in Suffolk, England.

Scarfe has just arrived back from the company’s own mocked up version of a “family kitchen of the future” at Adastral Park, where researchers are concentrating on marrying high-speed broadband capabilities with energy, security and entertainment innovations from promising start-up companies.

Recurring fascination
"It's information technology architecture for the home," says Chris Bilton, research and technology director there puts it.

“Sensors or devices are plugged into that [architecture], so you take information from a kettle, a toaster, a freezer or dishwasher. Then you’d have an application running on a handheld device that can give you a real-time readout of what’s happening.”

Scarfe and Bilton acknowledge that making bold predictions about the future of the home has been a recurring fascination for most of the last century.

Bilton refers back to the flat-pack, energy-efficient Dymaxion House which was created by "architect and practical philosopher" R Buckminster Fuller in 1929 and which initially seemed set for mass production.

While Fortune magazine predicted that a later version would see an assembly line act as a "dwelling machine", the idea never reached the market. Then there was Excite@Home – a company once valued at $6.7 billion in 1999, which created its own "home of tomorrow" in Manhattan's Union Square that year.

It contained the then revolutionary idea of an internet-connected TV, while fridge magnets were replaced by a “browser to post recipes pulled from the web”. Excite@Home would fail soon afterwards.

Earlier this year, Microsoft's director of strategic prototyping, Jonathan Cluts, also showcased a desk which automatically altered to suit the user's ergonomic preferences, and a device that scanned ingredients before guiding you through a recipe displayed automatically on the kitchen counter.

What BT researchers at Adastral Park are thinking about though, says Bilton, is refining and commercialising ideas that “aren’t far away” from entering the family home.

Take the platform where home heating is controlled via a tablet or phone application, “tailoring conditions to whatever settings you’d like and even potentially switching providers as well” at the tap of a screen.

Then there are sensors which note when you’ve left the building, says Bilton, closing curtains if desired, or optimising light when you return.

High bandwidth capabilities explored at Adastral Park allow software platforms to suggest TV shows or movies based on previous individual viewing patterns, while set-top boxes will become a security “hub” to keep track on whether windows are open, doors are closed or someone is in the home.

The television display, meanwhile, will not only be eight times the standard of current HDTV, it will also act as a more interactive window into the world, and indeed the doctor’s office.

“Healthcare in the home is going to massively expand as well,” says Bilton. “If you have an elderly relative who lives remotely, you can interact with them or help monitor them.”

Indeed, a live trial between researchers at Adastral Park and local Suffolk healthcare services is currently using everyday TVs “and putting something very similar to Skype” on the screens of elderly patients.

“We discovered they were leaving it on all day so they could just stop in and have a conversation, it was a huge change for them,” says Scarfe.

Personal data
It's not only BT that's working in this area obviously – a host of start-ups at this year's Web Summit are looking into automated energy possibilities in particular.

New York-based researcher Stephen A Ridley, meanwhile, has just released details of Tally – a small sensor which is connected to a platform that notifies you of anything from how many hands have dipped into your cookie jar to "how warm Spot's doghouse is", depending on where you place it.

"You can even carry it with you to a hotel to see if and when someone came into your hotel room," Ridley told The Irish Times. "It can also be used as a low-cost alternative to more expensive smart systems."

However, do Ridley, Bilton or Scarfe worry that such encroachment into the home and personal data by these products will act as a deterrent? Bilton isn’t so sure.

“I think all these things boil down to trust,” he says. “The real question is do you trust in the service provider you’ve got or trust the capabilities of the device you’ve got so that you won’t get hacked.

“If you a start small and build that trust you can take those products a long way.”