Open Your Mind to the Home Automation Era
From: IST Results - 04/22/2004

Information Society Technologies' HOMETALK project involves an open-source
home automation and networking platform that links previously unconnected
machines - ovens and phones, for example - via a homogenous reference point
or Residential Gateway, which can deploy this technology convergence through
the required hardware and software protocol stacks. "We offer it back in
open-source in order to allow for input by other parties and to quickly gain
adoption by developers," explains inAccess Networks CEO Christos
Georgopoulos, who notes that creating a standard platform and integrating the
developer community is the HOMETALK partners' goal. HOMETALK includes
speech-enabled graphical user interfaces so that user interaction is more
natural; the system can be controlled from a PDA or garden-variety telephone
by either programming or uttering into the handheld the HOMETALK-based
system's desired functions. "The central control/automation engine of
HOMETALK [called HERMES] includes a scheduler...It can register alarms that
the user sets directly through the telephone by performing voice
recognition," explains HOMETALK's Jan Sedivy. With voice recognition, elderly
and handicapped people could perform tasks that would otherwise be impossible
or difficult on the platform. HOMETALK's advantages include lower development
time, a common language, and the potential to concentrate on value-added
service rather than connectivity. The platform will be tested in Madrid and
Athens between June 2004 and May 2005. 

http://istresults.cordis.lu/index.cfm?section=news&Tpl=article&BrowsingType=Short%20Feature&ID=64810