A new perspective on the intelligent home

The ubiquitous availability of wide bandwidth communication networks will allow domestic access to a wide range of services, the provision of which will provide significant commercial opportunities in the coming decade. Multimedia services are already available for the distribution of television channels, audio and video communications, interactive video and links with the international information superhighways. As the technology becomes more widely available, smaller companies, such as local electric utilities are moving into the market place, seeking to define specialised services which can be profitably exploited. Such services could utilise cognate developments in other technologies ranging perhaps from the now common use of embedded computing in standard domestic appliances to recent advances in robotic systems, including such concepts as teleoperation and telepresence. A number of ideas are presented and briefly explored. The list presented is not intended to be exhaustive but, hopefully, sufficiently comprehensive to provide the basis of a debate which could lead to further extrapolation and variations on the themes outlined