“What Should the Brain of a New Era Smart Home Look Like?” Author | Liu Wei Editor | Wang Chuan
In the episode “White Christmas” of Black Mirror, the memory egg Cookie, which clones the owner’s consciousness, knows every detail of the owner’s life, understands when to wake her up, when to prepare breakfast, and even masters the taste and texture perfectly.Cookie represents humanity’s ultimate imagination of smart homes, where the home should “understand me better than I do.”While cloning human consciousness may still be far off and uncertain, a home brain that understands you better than you think may come sooner than expected.01
What Should the Brain of a New Era Smart Home Look Like?
On April 26, at the “Brain Power Unleashed, Future Insights” 2023 Haier Smart Home Brain Technology Conference held in Shanghai, Haier Smart Home showcased the latest achievements of the smart home brain.From the series of latest features and cases presented at the conference, it seems that smart homes are entering a new phase.Compared to traditional smart home hubs, Haier’s smart home brain has four distinct differences:
More Human-Like
In the past, wealthy households had a butler who could read the owner’s thoughts and arrange their clothing, food, housing, and travel in advance.In modern society, we can also have a smart “butler”—the core engine of a smart home. It can analyze user preferences based on big data and coordinate various smart appliances in the home through the Internet of Things to provide users with a comfortable and thoughtful living experience.Previously, this “butler” usually existed in the form of a smart speaker or control panel, making interaction with users less natural, cold, and lacking warmth. However, Haier Smart Home utilizes cutting-edge technology to give the smart home brain a human-like image and personality, launching the whole-house smart butler—Digital Human Xiao You, making it more tangible, lively, and warm.
The whole-house smart butler Xiao You can interact with users more naturally, simulating a real conversation experience. Users can have continuous dialogues with Xiao You without needing to wake it up each time. Users also do not need to issue tasks using standardized commands; Xiao You can accurately understand their intentions. When you feel hot, whether you say “turn on the air conditioning,” “I am hot,” or “optimize the air,” Xiao You can understand.Based on Haier Smart Home’s extensive knowledge base, Xiao You possesses high intelligence and can easily handle various life questions posed by users, such as how to cook a certain dish or the best way to clean oil stains from clothes. Even in different scenarios, Xiao You can provide personalized responses in various forms to the same command.In simple terms, Xiao You can not only help users with significant and minor matters in life but also provide companionship and emotional comfort when needed.
More Observant
In dramas, a butler in a wealthy household can understand the owner’s thoughts with just a glance or gesture, ensuring everything is arranged perfectly in advance.
Shifting from passive command reception to proactive service provision is also a direction the smart home industry is continuously striving for. As a leader in the industry, the smart home brain has already achieved results.The smart home brain has a multimodal perception system, truly making it perceptive and observant. For example, when you return home after playing basketball, sweating profusely, and the camera detects you fanning yourself, it can immediately link to the air conditioning and activate the cooling mode. Similarly, when friends visit, the air conditioning can detect an increase in the number of people and indoor carbon dioxide levels, proactively turning on fresh air to keep the air fresh.Doesn’t this feel like having a smart, observant butler serving you closely at home?
More Capable of Inference
Imagine if, after dinner, the butler washes the dishes clean but forgets to wipe the table, how would you feel?In Chinese, this behavior is referred to as “指一指拜一拜” (pointing and bowing), meaning it can only rigidly execute commands but lacks holistic thinking and adaptability.
Traditional smart homes are typical of “指一指拜一拜,” where users must issue commands one by one, or manually link multiple commands in an app beforehand for the smart home hub to execute a series of tasks.However, Haier Smart Home’s core engine—the smart home brain—has intelligent scene analysis capabilities, allowing it to analyze the user’s commands and proactively output service strategies based on the scenario.For instance, when a user says, “I want to watch a movie,” the TV will automatically turn on, the curtains will close, the lights will adjust to the appropriate brightness, and the air conditioning will set to a comfortable temperature without the user needing to issue commands one by one.
More Capable of Continuous Learning
Suppose you hire a butler who manages two chefs and three cleaners. One day, you need to add a driver, but the butler says he can’t handle it. You have signed a contract with the butler for several years, and even if you fire him, you must pay his full salary. Wouldn’t you be frustrated in such a situation?In the smart home industry, such examples are not uncommon. Users spend a lot of money installing a complete smart home system, but the industry is rapidly evolving, with new products and features emerging every year. The system that was initially installed for cutting-edge technology experiences obsolescence in no time, and replacing it incurs significant costs. Anyone would feel uneasy in such a situation.Considering this, Haier Smart Home has added the “Whole House OTA Smart Home Self-Evolution” feature, which can continuously upgrade smart services and product functions, iterating more rich smart scene experiences to create a “timeless” smart home.02
Why Do Many Smart Home Brains Disappear Over Time?
Looking back at the development history of the smart home industry since the new wave of smart homes began in 2014, many companies have attempted to build an industry-oriented smart home brain. However, to this day, many platforms have vanished, and only Haier Smart Home Brain has persisted and achieved industry leadership.Haier Smart Home’s ability to maintain its lead in the smart home industry is attributed to several factors:
Cutting-Edge Technology Layout
At the April 26 “Digital Intelligence Symbiosis, All Things Renewed” Haier Smart Home 2023 Ecological Conference, the term “original technology” was repeatedly mentioned. To date, Haier Smart Home has over 200 original technologies, most of which have become benchmarks in China and even globally, prompting continuous follow-up from the industry.
Why has Haier Smart Home been able to continuously create so many original technologies? What kind of R&D system supports it? Wang Ye, Vice President of Haier Smart Home and Global Advanced R&D General Manager, summarized it in 12 words: user perception, global co-creation, experience iteration.In terms of user perception, since all Haier Smart Home users are accumulated on a digital platform, it can more efficiently, from multiple angles and methods, understand and perceive users, and quickly respond to user needs.In terms of global co-creation, Haier Smart Home has built a global “10+N” open innovation system and HOPE innovation ecological platform. Through online platforms, it achieves collaboration between 10+N innovation touchpoints and global resources, enabling 24-hour uninterrupted innovation. Additionally, Haier Smart Home has led the establishment of over 20 national-level scientific innovation platforms, including key national laboratories, national engineering technology research centers, and national manufacturing innovation centers, with 71 research institutes and over 1000 laboratories across five continents.It is precisely because of a complete and open innovation system that Haier Smart Home can continuously achieve breakthroughs in cutting-edge technology and implement technological innovations in products promptly.At the same time, in terms of experience iteration, based on the user-single integration system and mechanism, Haier Smart Home can continuously iterate, supporting products, scenes, and platforms to continuously generate original technologies.
Rich Product Matrix
An isolated brain cannot produce value; it also needs “eyes, ears, mouth, and nose” to help gather information, and “hands and feet” to execute tasks.
From mass-market to high-end, from kitchen appliances to bathroom fixtures, Haier Smart Home’s rich product line forms the “eyes, ears, mouth, and nose” and “hands and feet” of the smart home brain. Based on a rich and complete product line, Haier Smart Home can tailor scene-based solutions for different user groups, creating an excellent whole-house smart experience.In May last year, Haier Smart Home’s scene brand, San Wing Bird, launched the “1+3+5+N” whole-house smart all-scene solution, creating three professional systems for whole-house intelligence, whole-house water, and whole-house air, along with five smart spaces in the kitchen, bedroom, living room, bathroom, and balcony, extending to various personalized scenarios such as movie watching, laundry, and cooking.Based on a rich array of products and scenes, Haier Smart Home has initially constructed its smart home ecosystem.As the saying goes, “Plant a phoenix tree, and the phoenix will come.”Haier Smart Home’s internal ecosystem further attracts more industry ecological partners to join, thus forming a larger and more open external ecosystem. The positive flywheel has begun to turn.
Comprehensive Pre-Sales and After-Sales Service
In the traditional home and single product smart era, home appliances were the last link in home decoration, and any appliance could be replaced at will.However, as single products evolve into whole-home intelligence, coupled with the younger consumer group’s increasing aesthetic demands for home decor, the position of home appliance selection in the renovation chain is becoming more prominent, which raises higher requirements for integrated design and one-stop service.
To this end, Haier Smart Home has built numerous smart home experience centers offline, integrating thousands of ecological partners, and collaborating with over 60 designers, including black label designers, to provide users with the latest products, the most professional solutions, and the most rigorous modular construction standards, initiating a “strict selection” model in the home industry.At the same time, Haier San Wing Bird has innovated integrated delivery standards for scenes, efficient integration delivery standards for spaces, and whole-house system integration delivery standards, truly allowing users to “see what they get, experience what they enjoy.”This is a significant undertaking and an unavoidable task, and only a company like Haier Smart Home, with sufficient experience, a broad user base, and a complete product line, has the capability to integrate such a complex chain.Only by thoroughly connecting the upstream and downstream chains and providing one-stop service can the smart home brain and whole-home smart homes be widely implemented.03
Conclusion
After years of development and accumulation, Haier Smart Home Brain has become more than just a product; it has become an industry paradigm, leading the industry forward.At the 2023 Haier Smart Home Brain Technology Conference, Haier Smart Home, in collaboration with ecological partners, released the upgraded version of the “Family Brain White Paper” 2.0, comprehensively covering more personalized new demands for smart homes and defining the brain of the new era family.Additionally, at the conference, Haier Smart Home led the establishment of the first “Global Family Brain Alliance” in collaboration with leading companies such as iFlytek, Microsoft, and Huawei. In the future, the smart home brain platform will integrate the advantages of various industry ecological partners, continuously upgrading the differentiated user experience in the industry.A rainforest ecosystem for smart homes is rapidly taking shape. It is foreseeable that in the near future, this rainforest will nurture more new species.
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