Synthetic sensor makes a room of smart devices even smarter

Carnegie Mellon University hopes the device will create ‘smart rooms’ from multiple devices by utilising the Internet of Things.

A team from US-based Carnegie Mellon University has developed a device that can smarten up an entire room’s worth of regular devices. The prototype, coined as a Synthetic Sensor, plugs into a regular wall power outlet and monitors the room it is placed in with sensors that commonly crop up in smart home devices, including sound, light, vibrations, heat, temperature, and electromagnetic signals. It then uses machine-learning algorithms to analyse what the data means.

The fast-developing nature of the Internet of Things means the average home of the future could be full of smart fridges, lights, thermostats, TVs, toasters, and so on, so the team hopes the Synthetic Sensor will enable all devices to come together to be as efficient as they can possibly be and feedback to the owners what they do. Since much of the data collated may be sensitive, the device stores and processes the data locally.

Access to smart devices has boomed in recent years, with similar examples of its effect on the technology industry including a smart t-shirt that has been developed with a respiratory monitor and smart blinds that generate electricity using solar energy. What innovation would you like to see to make an action more efficient?