At Home Anywhere (@HA)

At Home Anywhere

The goal of the @HA research project is to integrate home appliances into one coherent distributed architecture. To achieve this goal @HA has two main objectives:

1. to design, build and evaluate one common integrated network for entertainment, control and information, that supports both realtime and non-realtime traffic with a high degree of robustness, and
2. to research the use of resource-lean embedded systems, so that even inexpensive small appliances can be integrated in the system.

To achieve our goal we will be using two innovations:

1. the network will be based on a new type of realtime token protocol that uses scheduling to calculate the optimum route of the token through the network. Depending on the scheduling algorithm, a bandwidth utilization of up to 100 percent is possible. Because the network must support dynamic configuration (plug-and-play), token management is essential to prevent token loss or multiple tokens;
2. small appliances, like temperature or light sensors, will be included in the system. This presumes low-cost embedded processors with limited processing power (resource-lean). These are used to implement a network stack and a small operating system kernel to handle lightweight network protocols. All other operations (application and user interface) can be delegated to other appliances that have sufficient resources. Delegation does not only enable us to include small appliances. It is also the basis for
3. transparency because it separates controlling and controlled object: the user may inspect and control any appliances from any location.

For more information, have a look at the following document.

@HA is sponsored by NWO and by the IBM equinox program.