A solution for heterogeneous domotic systems integration

The Information and Communication technologies spread across our life to make easier our everyday tasks and to increase the quality of our existence in every domain, realizing the Pervasive Computing vision. As in other domains, also in home environments many appliances are rapidly becoming computationally enabled, equipped with different communications protocols, and therefore connected to home networks. Domotic systems, variously called "smart homes", "smart environment systems", "intelligent buildings", or "intelligent homes", can now be proposed and would go far towards simplifying the interaction between the people and their domestic environment. A great number of benefits would stem from the implementation of such systems: greater safety, autonomy and self-esteem for disabled and elderly people, energy saving, and consequently better comfort. The problem of modern domotic systems arise often from the communication incompatibility among products of different manufacturers. The lack of a unique acknowledged standard hinders domotic diffusion. In "Domotics Lab" of Italian National Research Council was designed a general tool aimed to obtain interoperability, able to communicate with all different domotic systems and devices using different protocols.