Home automation as a means of independent living

Home automation is a combination of sensors and actuators, which is built upon to render systems for the control and automation of lighting, heating and ventilation, power and entertainment. Home automation can be extremely helpful for those people who live alone for their basic security functionality, and complex medical help to treat health related problems outside of the hospital or clinic. Home automation can be delivered in a number of ways at both research and commercial levels. A number of research groups are actively addressing the area of Intelligent Homes in the US, which is directed towards development of a home, which is viewed as an intelligent agent. Research within the Aware Home Research Initiative aims to develop environments which can be aware of the activities at home and whereabouts of the person living alone. The path to a more efficient, intelligent, and pervasive use of automation at home is still challenging and research is undergoing to achieve it.