Danielle Schroeder and I plan to research the viability of autonomous homes, where we define autonomous homes as being almost or completely self-sufficient. These can be sustainable and utile features that would make a living environment almost Star Trek-esque, from lights going off as one exits a room, automatic doors, etc., to sustainable features that help the house maintain a “net-zero” status. There is no gas supply, so energy is generated internally either by geothermal, solar, or wind energy; collected rainwater is collected and used; and waste can be recycled or disposed of internally. In our investigation we will further define autonomous homes and provide an overview of current and future technologies. We’ll then look into what technologies are currently on the market, reasons for why they are not in widespread use, and list incentives to look towards autonomous living environments for homeowners/businesses. This study will be pertinent to the objectives of AE 510 in that it will introduce us to more revolutionary areas of intelligent and green infrastructure that have not yet been expanded upon in class.
As mentioned during class discussion, the civil engineering industry is behind in terms of transformative technology; now with the advent of autonomous vehicles (Google cars), we think that self-sustaining houses are what’s coming up next and what we will be living in in the near future. The main inspiration for this investigation were from entries we have seen at the Solar Decathlon, and we are interested in partaking in the international competition for our senior design project next year.
A couple other things we plan to include in our report (perhaps in a chart): comparing features and their costs, assessing their feasibility, what tax exemptions are available as incentives for homeowners to invest in this technology, etc. In addition to the economic and environmental benefits that autonomous living brings, we will explore how else it can be of use. In prior blog posts the class has discussed having robots assist the elderly/disabled in retirement homes; for our study we will explore how an autonomous home can allow people to live their lives with limited human assistance, as well as any other potential uses.
Sources we used for our outline:
[3] http://www.solardecathlon.gov/ Comments:
Qallaf
Whitesell
Yasmina,
ReplyDeleteI really like this topic. It's really interesting. The prospect of autonomous homes seems like something out of The Jetsons but from what you are saying it appears closer to the present day than I realized. Are there any examples of a fully autonomous home in the world today?
I would imagine that the biggest reason that these are not in widespread use is due to high cost and the slight inefficiencies present when using wind and solar energy as the lone electrical supply for the house. What happens if someone in an autonomous home wants to watch television or have a wi-fi connection? These services are usually provided by an outside company like Verizon and probably would not be possible for a person to supply and generate their own cable and wi-fi connection.