Smart Home Technologies: Uses and Abuses

This paper discusses the research and technologies around the area of smart homes. It takes the position that the word smart has been used in many contexts both where it makes sense and where it does not. Furthermore from a pedagogical point of view, the paper discusses the use of a smart home lab as means to teach various AI paradigms that require a live interaction with its environment. Here the word smart is used within a proper context; therefore a connection with sensors and actuators is required to provide the information bits needed for knowledge driven applications such as: ontologies, adaptive learning and data mining. By providing a rich input/output environment to drive computer applications our students can obtain the correct perspective of both the field of AI and that of smart home technologies. We feel that the students are able to make a distinction between the benefits of this approach from the commercial advertising associated with the smart home terminology.