Meghan Clark: 2016 IoT Workshop

3:10pm

Despite the prevalence of social networking and communications in nearly every aspect of our digital lives, little work has been done to examine the unique contributions that networks of smart homes can make in the space of technologically-mediated human interaction. In this work we introduce a smart home application called Ghosting, which is a two-way telepresence system that synchronizes the audio and lighting state of two homes at a room level. This allows users to converse as they normally would while sharing a home, such as by talking while in the same room or by shouting across the house. Users can additionally experience in real time the casual yet intimate interactions of daily shared living, like hearing the remote occupant walking from room to room, coughing and shuffling papers just around the corner, and seeing the lights turn on and off. The broad appeal of spending time with distant loved ones could lead to the widespread adoption of space synchronization technologies, forming a global home-to-home network. We explore the new applications and economies that could emerge from such a network, given the capabilities of the Ghosting infrastructure.

Meghan Clark is a fourth year Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan, where she works on cyber-physical systems and causing trouble. She is the recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the Rackham Merit Fellowship, and the Microsoft Graduate Women's Scholarship. If found, please return to Prof. Prabal Dutta, 4773 Beyster Building, 2260 Hayward St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109.