On June 21, a piece of news about the launch of the AI compatibility layer of Home Assistant (hereinafter referred to as HA), the world’s largest open source smart home platform, attracted widespread attention in the digital circle. Many smart home enthusiasts were excited about this breakthrough development.
However, it was later confirmed that the news was untrue, and there was no description of the launch of relevant functions in HA’s official recent update log.
Although it was an own mistake, this incident also brought the concept of “smart home agentization” back to the public’s attention again, triggering a new round of discussion in the industry on the future development direction of smart homes.
The popularity of smart homes in China is increasing year by year, but many users have had a similar disappointing experience: they are at home and the network connection is normal, but they cannot control smart devices at home through mobile APPs or voice assistants. Most of these failures are caused by the cloud dependence of managed smart home platforms.
Currently, the control instructions for most consumer-grade smart homes need to be uploaded to the brand’s cloud server before being sent to the home devices. Once the brand’s cloud fails, users will not be able to control the device even if the local network is normal.
In addition, ecological exclusivity is also a major pain point that affects user experience: after choosing an ecological gateway of a certain brand, subsequent additional equipment can often only be selected within the same ecosystem, and it is difficult to take into account the advantageous products of different brands.
Although the industry has launched the Matter open protocol in an attempt to connect different ecosystems, it currently only enables the interoperability of basic functions such as switches and temperature adjustment, and a large number of brand-specific advanced functions still cannot be used across ecosystems.
In addition to user experience issues, the privacy risks of closed-source hosting platforms have also attracted much attention: smart door locks record the time when users return home, human body sensors sense user activity areas, air conditioners record users’ sleeping temperature preferences, and sweeping robots grasp household floor plan information. Once these private data are improperly used, it is likely to harm the rights and interests of users.
The core advantages of the open source platform HA are also reflected in these aspects: local automation functions can still run normally even when the network is disconnected, devices of different brands can be connected to the same local system, and user privacy data does not need to be uploaded to the cloud, all is stored in the local device.
In order for the locally deployed smart home platform to have intelligent interaction and proactive service capabilities comparable to mainstream voice assistants, agentization is a recognized core solution.
Smart home agentization does not mean adding a chat window to all home appliances. The core is to make smart devices no longer just a virtual switch in the APP, but can actively report their own status, capability boundaries and linkage rules to the system to achieve autonomous collaboration across devices.
For example, agent-based air conditioners can automatically adjust the air supply angle in conjunction with the person tracking function of security cameras, and sweeping robots can combine information from spatial sensors to autonomously plan cleaning routes and avoid areas where people are active.
Currently, many domestic manufacturers have already deployed in relevant tracks: leading home appliance companies have scene data of core household appliances such as air conditioners, refrigerators, and water heaters, and are exploring active services based on users’ living habits. Previously, a home appliance brand announced that the whole house will be intelligently connected to a universal large model, opening up home appliance AI.
The first wave of Agent implementation; spatial intelligence brands focus on home scene perception capabilities, collecting information such as door and window status, personnel activities, and environmental parameters through various sensors to provide a data basis for AI decision-making; whole-house intelligent solution manufacturers deploy networks, sensors, and central control systems according to space planning from the pre-decoration stage to provide a clear spatial relationship base map for AI; and platform manufacturers provide AI Agent quick access solutions for a large number of traditional IoT manufacturers without R&D capabilities, lowering the threshold for industry upgrades.
For ordinary consumers, the optimal smart home experience in the AI era is not to add a universal assistant who can talk, but to reduce the sense of presence and actively complete various scene services without the user’s awareness.
At present, agent-based smart homes are still mainly popular among digital enthusiasts. To achieve true inclusive technology, the entire industry needs to work together so that ordinary families can enjoy the convenience of active intelligence without complicated configurations.
