The home of the future is here, right now. The automated home, a kind of Jetsons without hovercars, is on display at Grand Designs Live London.
The home 2.0 brings gadgets, the web and your living space together in a seamless system that automates heating, lighting, music and bathing. It's the future that sci fi movies told us we'd have.
The Automated Home at Grand Designs Live, organised by CEDIA (the Association for the smart homes industry) includes a robot that cleans your floor, a shower you can take lying down, a lounge immersed in water which gives you a light massage while you relax, glass that acts as a heating system and a TV you can customise according to your living room décor.
Iain Shaw, one of the partners from CEDIA members Brilliant Living, a company which designs and installs smart interiors, told The Huffington Post that while automation sounds far out, high-end automated homes are very real.
"All this might sound extravagant, but for high end clients, it's very real. Music systems are by far the most popular automated function, using iPod-like interfaces in the bathroom. The lie down showers are cool and hidden speakers are great."
In the living room areas, the automated home shows how a room can transform from a fully-fledged cinema room to a normal living space with a plasma TV hidden behind a motorised picture, a drop down projector and screen and invisible, plaster-over speakers and in-wall subwoofer.
In the kitchen, equipment is hidden away to remove clutter, with Halstead controls that carry out multiple functions.
In the bathroom, Dornbracht shows a relaxing horizontal shower, which you enjoy lying down - kind of like waterboarding but luxurious.
The Hoesch water lounge transforms bathing with air massage and an in-bath couch for bathing comfort.
Shaw says it's not just high end clients who are attracted to automation: "It's not all glitzy stuff. Individual elements are becoming the norm. For instance, and this is one my mum loves, you can reduce multiple remotes for TVs, DVDs and stereos to just one. That's a way that automation makes a lot of sense."
More automation highlights include:
iRobot
The world’s most compact floor washing robot, the iRobot scrubs your tile, linoleum and sealed hardwood floors.
The iRobot's cleaning system uses a flexible bladder that keeps clean solution and dirty water separate. As the robot cleans, the bladder shrinks in size, freeing up space in the robot to hold the dirty water that is picked up.
IQ Glass
A revolutionary, eco-efficient heating system using “intelligent” glass has won glowing praise in a range of domestic and commercial applications in England and Wales, reducing energy bills and carbon emissions.
Ebode
Ebode LightSpeaker combines low energy-consumption LED Lighting with wireless sound in a plug-and-play system. The system can be configured to deliver sound to four rooms and can be set up within minutes.
Grand Designs Live London runs from Saturday 5th to Sunday 13th May 2012 at ExCeL London. Tickets are from £12 to £19 at www.granddesignslive.com, or 0844 854 1348 + kids 15 and under go free.
Open 10am – 6pm 5th – 12th May
Open 10am - 5pm 13th May
See more automated home images below.