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South Korea's Home of the Future

Posted by Zonk on Sat Nov 25, 2006 08:27 PM
from the you-can-watch-televised-gaming-from-your-future-home dept.
Communications Hardware Technology
An anonymous reader writes to mention a BBC article looking at South Korea's vision of the home of the future. Their vision includes the use of many recent advances in interface technology, networking, and wireless communication. The difference? Unlike the high-tech demo homes we've discussed in the past, 100 of these units have already been built. Another 30,000 high-tech flats are in the planning stages, to be completed by 2008. From the article: "Here, everything is voice activated, and the fridge can provide you with recipes which use the ingredients inside, and let you know if your food is out of date. It relies on the food packaging containing radio tags, or RFID labels, which can be read by the fridge each time it passes through the door. In the bedroom your wardrobe mirror can tell you your schedule for the day, help you select your clothes — if all your clothes have washable radio tags compatible with the system — and keep you up to date with the weather and traffic."
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  • as bad as dukenukem forever (Score:4, Funny)

    by 80 85 83 83 89 33 (819873) on Saturday November 25 2006, @08:31PM (#16988472) Journal
    and it must have made the cover of this month's Popular Science.

    or maybe it's like HDTV and after YEARS (decades) of being heralded, it might finally be coming. still overhyped IMHO....

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Ruff_ilb (769396)
        Are you guys kidding? Did you even get halfway through the summary?

        Again:

        "Unlike the high-tech demo homes we've discussed in the past, 100 of these units have already been built. Another 30,000 high-tech flats are in the planning stages, to be completed by 2008."

        They are definitely implementing these advances - or at least proving that they CAN be implemented.

        In terms of "where is your smart home..."

        Well, with enough money, you can have one too. This is prove that the technology DOES exist and CAN be implem
        • This is prove (sic) that the technology DOES exist and CAN be implemented. It will, however, cost you.

          The cost is not necessarily measured in dollars, either. The biggest challenge with this "smart home" crap is twofold; level of maturity and level of integration.

          The products are not really matured yet, at least from where I sit (working part time on creating a "smart home" out of my current dumb one.) They're similar to Linux; making steps in the maturity direction, but we're a few years away.

          Too, they
          • Why do I need everything to communicate? Why does my living room lighting need to know what is in my refrigerator, or my home theatre system need to know what sweaters and in my closet? I just don't see a reason in integrate the whole house - but I do like a lot of the ideas here and wish I had them (my refrigerator being able to tell me what I can make with what I have and when I am running low on something, for example, is the coolest in my opinion).

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Zemran (3101)
              But after a while, when you have got used to it all...

              You get a bad cold and feel like shit and the house refuses to co-operate with you... you are already feeling pissed and now even the house is ganging up on you...

              Time to go postal
              • Personally for lights and locks I like the idea of each person in the house having an RFID chip on them. The chip is used for music preferences, lighting brightness, maybe even pictures on the wall (I'm thinking digital frames), and open certain cabinets - such as the liquor cabinets and wine cooler. I personally would not want to be reminded of my laundry while watching the new blockbuster action movie, so I hope your vision becomes reality I hope that it is highly configurable.
        • sure, it's coming. and a robot in every home is just right around the corner. and China can give you a "THIRD-BRAIN" so you can be a smart ass in your smart home.

  • Nuke Safe? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Joe The Dragon (967727) on Saturday November 25 2006, @08:33PM (#16988486)
    Does it have a fallout shelter?

  • Poor Sebastian (Score:5, Funny)

    by anagama (611277) <thepotter AT yahoo DOT com> on Saturday November 25 2006, @08:33PM (#16988488) Homepage
    Won't someone please think of little 3yo Sebastion? Imagine what all those radio waves will do to his thin skull!

  • But... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Can you play starcraft in it? Useless to Koreans if you can't!

  • my 'house of the future" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LM741N (258038) on Saturday November 25 2006, @08:52PM (#16988636)
    One that doesn't require two people working 60 hours per week to purchase. One that has a yard wider than 10ft. Really, does anybody other the wealthy even care about a high tech house?

    • Re:my 'house of the future" (Score:5, Interesting)

      by angrycrip (1029476) on Saturday November 25 2006, @09:48PM (#16988970)
      At a decent price (yeah, that'd be a while) this type of system would be great for some people with certain mental disabilities, including head injury with memory loss. Low level alzheimers perhaps? A health care aid is way overpriced for helping you with simple things like remembering what you need to buy or what you should wear, besides being awkward. Ideas like this might help "high functioning" disabled people stay out of group homes or nursing homes someday. So some people care, maybe not most people.
      • Yup, we just had an 1800' sq foot house built on 6 acres for $135k, 30 minutes outside of Albuquerque, NM. I have no clue why anyone would live in town (other than mountain lion attacks (2 killed within a mile last year, attacking goats and horses). Definately beats our starter home in the Tampa Bay area we just sold for $220k.
        • Mental parse error: Expected ")" on line 1.
          • That's the thing with these computers ..... if it knows there's a missing (round bracket|speech mark|posh bracket), why doesn't it just put the bloody thing in for you and be done complaining? Obviously they're not that smart (you can get a bit of a clue from indentation as to where a posh bracket might be missing from).

            It's like the way GCC gives you a warning if you omit #include <stdio.h> but then saves you from the worst by automagically including it for you. Well, why can't it go just one t

            • That's the thing with these computers ..... if it knows there's a missing (round bracket|speech mark|posh bracket), why doesn't it just put the bloody thing in for you and be done complaining? Obviously they're not that smart (you can get a bit of a clue from indentation as to where a posh bracket might be missing from).

              Because it's often much more desirable to throw an error than try to plug along and "guess" where the missing syntax piece was supposed to go. Sometimes it's not even missing, but an a

  • Hmm.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by malkir (1031750) on Saturday November 25 2006, @08:52PM (#16988640)
    Complete with microphones and video cameras in your television sets!
  • Does it have a large enough garage for my flying car?

  • At what price? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Josh Lindenmuth (1029922) <joshlindenmuth AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday November 25 2006, @08:53PM (#16988650) Journal
    Unfortunately the article didn't give an estimate of the price for one of these hi-tech homes. Would the average (or even the techie) find the incremental cost worth it? I doubt it. We now have much of this technology available to us in the U.S., but few people choose to buy it. The only big difference is that the hi-tech "flats" are being sold as a package deal, instead of the buyer needing to request the upgrades.

    How much would such a home be worth to you? Would you pay the $50-100K or so that the extra features would likely cost? Considering the only way that my fridge would know that my yogurt is spoiled is if I told the fridge I just bought yogurt, it doesn't seem like that big of a convenience (who wants to type in everything you buy into a console on the fridge?). Also, do you really need fashion advice from a hi-tech mirror? I don't trust my own fashion sense, so I'm certainly not going to trust a computer's. My wife suits me just perfectly in that capacity.
    • God knows it'd be a technical impossibility for yoghurt manufacturers to include the expiration date in the radio tag.
      • Oh, are RFID tags common now in S Korea? That's a different story if they are.

        I know they're years away from being included in single grocery items in the U.S. due to the relatively high cost (~$.05/tag). If some countries use RFID for everything, not just 1 per each case shipped to the stores (as is now becoming standard in the U.S.), then some of this smart technology makes a lot more sense. Even the creepy talking mirror is a marketable product if clothes in S. Korea come implanted with a descripti
      • It's not a technical impossibility, but the economic liability doesn't make it attractive. If you were a yoghurt company, would you bother increasing your product price, just for the convenience of the 0.0001% of the market who has a smart home?

        It's a competitive market. Increase your price, and people will probably switch to the cheaper yoghurt brand that doesn't have RFID tags.

          • It's interesting that you speak of luddites, because there is just as much cost to being a too enthusiastic technophile as there is to being a luddite. What does South Korea gain from wasting money on "smart homes" and RFID chips in every product? They don't really benefit people in any significant way, but add costs to the economy. So, if it is popular, it may actually be a loss to society overall.
    • First off if you want low maintaince and working well then you need Crestron level gear and that will cost nearly $100K to replicate what they have there. a realistic setup will cost $15K with every light controlled by it's self , data collection, and audio system in every room controlled by the same system. Add to that REMOVAL of all the tv screens. use audio only. The house through occupancy sensors can easily determine you are done with your morning showering/dressing and headed to the kitchen, fire u
      • I wonder if RFID is necessary for that. I wonder if chemistry sniffers might be developed such that it can tell if something's gone bad. Rather than wasting a nickel on every package that gets thrown away eventually, the sniffer might work for the life of the refrigerator.
  • "Fridge, list available meals."
    "State ingredient search depth"
    "Fridge, Level 5, 'hard-up-on-cash' level"
    "Computing..."

    "1 meal found"

    "Fridge, show meals"

    "Cheese. End of meal list."
    • Fridge, list all available beverages.

      "Beer"

      Fridge, list all available foodstuffs.

      "Condiments"
    • Hey these are Korean smart houses. So the dialog goes like this:

      You: "What do I have to eat?"

      Fridge: "...one cabbage. Nothing else"

      You: "What can I do with that?"

      Fridge: "...you can have kim-chi in two weeks if you let it ferment."

      You: "Starvation is always an option, I guess."

      Fridge:" If you were a Transformer, you could suck back some motor oil."

      You: "Better than kim-chi. Hey wait, fridge. Do you have Transformer-envy?"

      Fridge: "Never mind. Besides, Korean babes eat kim-chi."

      You: "No."

      Fridge: "Y

  • One thing... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ant P. (974313) on Saturday November 25 2006, @09:04PM (#16988710) Homepage
    Who else can listen in on all this data?
  • Gee, with this level of automation with RFID tags, how can I get one implanted? I would love to be able to do what I want but I'm not automated enough!!
  • Does it run Linux?

  • Why do they always describe this sort of technology as "smart" and then throw in the stupidest features imaginable? I can't imagine anyone being helped by a mirror that dispenses fashion advice. It's just there because they had the technology to make it possible, but not the common sense to resist making something flashy and worthless.
  • ...Is there anything half as ambitious as this in these United States of America? I doubt, sadly.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Rude Turnip (49495)
      We're too busy working insane hours to even care about all that stuff. If I lived in Florida with warmer weather, a large cardboard box would be more than enough home for me to manage with my hours. Posting this from my office on a Saturday night, btw.
  • South Korea is moving home?

    That's a lot of cardboard boxes. Time to get stocks in the paper industry, I think.

  • method of home construction or a bunch of gadgets (Score:4, Interesting)

    by heroine (1220) on Saturday November 25 2006, @09:53PM (#16988998) Homepage
    What makes it a home of the future? It used to be that the home of the future didn't involve the gadgets but the way it's built. Homes of the future used to be made of plastic, garbage cans, heat trapping foam, composite polymer windows. They were made robotically using polymer spray guns. By using advanced construction they were going to end homelessness and reduce energy consumption.

    Now the BBC has declared a collection of gadgets that's bigger than the collection of gadgets you already have as a "home of the future". It could be a bunch of gadgets in an apartment, a bunch of gadgets in a car, a bunch of gadgets in a pocket, but since a large government has taxed for it and created a huge program for it, it's now called a "home of the future".

  • It's all data, no action. You can query the 'fridge, but you can't order food and have it show up in the fridge. Combine Webvan with a pass-through refrigerator the delivery service can access, and you'd have something. Maybe even within-building robotic delivery, which would work for apartment blocks.

    There's no automated cleaning. iRobot's Roomba vacuum is a joke, but there are units around $2000 that almost work. Get those into production. An apartment that cleans itself while you're out would ac

  • Me: OK, show all the recipes that use the ingredients inside you.

    Fridge: ...

    Me: Well?

    Fridge: Uh, nothing was found that involves a two-month old can of moldy pork-and-beans.

  • my own home for the future (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pikine (771084) on Saturday November 25 2006, @10:25PM (#16989182) Journal
    I don't consider these human-assisting technologies "for the future." Here are more important criteria than that: (1) being energy efficient (electricity and heat), and (2) being environment friendly (allow natural vegetation to grow around it especially in an urban setting, adapting to the landscape rather than adapt landscape to it).
  • Apart from the fact that I can decide what to wear and what to eat today myself, thank you, there is a thing about this house that really worries me. Computers are power hogs. I read somewhere that all the efforts Great Britain has done to reduce its CO2 output in recent years will be nullified when digital TV is in every home in Great Britain. Imagine how many extra power plants must be built in South Korea to keep these houses powered. Not good for the global environment.
  • To gadget-tastic for my tastes. I'll take the Dilbert House [unitedmedia.com] over this any day. (Assuming that I must live in suburbia. Anyone know of a DUH-like project for city dwellers)

    -Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
  • It's my experience that, unless your fridge is really knackered, food will survive a good week or so beyond the manufacturer's date stamp. And some foods -- the versions of French cheeses that you get in British supermarkets spring to mind -- aren't edible until that date!

    Milk is interesting. It goes through a stage where you can taste that it's just starting to go on the turn but it's fine in tea; then a bit later it's no good in tea but OK in coffee. Then it starts to separate into watery and fatty p
  • This looks more like a bunch of gadgets thrown together. I imagine the home of the future to be responsive to the enviromnental and security needs of the occupiers. Doors automatically open and close when you approach, if there isn't someone in that room that desires privacy. The house warns you if there is a window open affecting the efficiency of the heating system. The house learns your arrival times and heats the house just before you are likely to turn up. LED lighting adjusts the mood lighting, for ex

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