MIT's Dina Katabi Discusses "the Invisibles," the Ubiquitous Sensors Designed to Replace Wearables
Designed to monitor everything from where you are and what you're doing to your health, the future of the smart home is a lot more subtle.
Dina Katabi, the Thuan (1990) and Nicole Pham Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has offered insight into the future of ubiquitous smart devices designed to hide in the background — creating a smart home "with actual intelligence," as the organization would have it.
"My lab is working on the next generation of wireless sensors and machine-learning models that can make more personalized predictions," Katabi explains in a question-and-answer session with MIT's Kim Martineau. "We call them 'the invisibles.'"
"For example, instead of ringing an alarm at a specific time, the sensor can tell if you’ve woken up and started making coffee. It knows to silence the alarm. Similarly, it can monitor an elderly person living alone and alert their caregiver if there’s a change in vital signs or eating habits. Most importantly, it can act without people having to wear a device or tell the sensors what to do."
Katabi and colleagues see these "invisibles" as the logical successor to the current crop of wearables, but are aiming for something more subtle: "Touchless" sensors capable of tracking movements, activities, and even vital signs, and which communicate with one another to boost the quality of the data gathered.
"For example, by combining user location data in the home with power signals from home smart meters," Katabi explains, "we can tell when appliances are used and measure their energy consumption. In all cases, the machine-learning models we’re co-developing with the sensors analyze radio waves and power signals to extract high-level information about how people interact with each other and their appliances."
"Wearables track acceleration but they don’t understand actual movements; they can’t tell whether you walked from the kitchen to the bedroom or just moved in place. They can’t tell whether you’re sitting at the table for dinner or at your desk for work. The invisibles address all of these issues."
The full article is now available on MIT News.
Main article image courtesy of The MacArthur Foundation.