Future of Cloud-Based Smart Devices

For years, futurists forecasted the day when a refrigerator would automatically create your grocery list and send the list to the store so your essentials could be delivered. The cloud’s ability to provide Internet access any place and any time makes such processing a reality. Today, those devices exist. Using a smart-home controller, users can easily control lighting, temperature, music, as well as when the oven should turn on so that dinner is ready at a specific time. In the future, the capabilities and device-to-device collaboration between such smart devices will only increase.

Consider, for example, that every household has appliances such as refrigerators, water heaters, dishwashers, clothes washers and dryers, and so on. If these devices are replaced with smart appliances—ones that are “energy aware”—they can control their power demand during peak times and in the process, save the consumer money.