Say what you will – voice control is the next big thing in technology. And there’s no doubt it’s the future of home automation, as Damian Cavanagh, home technology expert and Managing Director of Electronic Living, shares.
Until recently, controlling your smart home boiled down to remotes, apps and mobile devices, but what if you could tell your home what to do by simply using your voice? “It might sound like the stuff of ‘Star Trek’ or ‘The Jetsons’, but recent advancements in speech recognition technology have made a voice-controlled smart home completely attainable,” says Damian. “Many of the gadgets that promise to get the job done are already available. Some come from ambitious startup tech companies while others come from the titans of the industry.”
As Silicon Valley’s most powerful companies continue to develop the gadgets of the future, voice control is set to emerge as a central feature for the home. And rest assured these developments will give your smart home an intelligent set of ears. “As machines get better at listening to and understanding us, we may find ourselves using our phones less often, preferring instead to get a quick answer from our verbal helpers,” suggests Damian. “After decades of pushing and swiping, this will be a fundamental and revolutionary change in the way we use technology, particularly in the home!”
It is estimated that by this year the demand for home automation systems will have grown by 60 percent. This growth will be driven largely by the increasing levels of connectivity in our daily lives – the expansion of smartphone technology allows users to monitor and control our homes’ systems while on the move from anywhere in the world.
Damian adds that voice recognition will be a primary interface for the connected home moving forward and will provide a very simple and natural means to communicate with doors, alarm systems, lights, kitchen appliances, home entertainment systems and so much more. “The beauty is it doesn’t ask you to change any of your current habits; it just makes a surprising number of those habits better with much greater efficiency,” he says.
“With your house always listening, you can just call out and ask it to do things; the possibilities are endless and very exciting for homeowners that are in the early stages of building or renovating.”
Voice recognition could just be the connected home experience you didn’t know you wanted, and should definitely be an item on the wish list when designing today’s modern home. “In such a short space of time, the house of the future has swiftly become the house of the present as we all embark on an era of inevitable technological change and innovation.”
