[LUM#8] Research apartment

[LUM Magazine] - Published on October 30, 2018 in Science-Society

What will tomorrow's apartment look like? For three years, a team of researchers will be analyzing the daily lives of two students living in an ultra-connected apartment. Objective: to observe the uses of new technologies in order to better use and protect themselves from them. This project, called Human at Home, will start in October 2018 in Montpellier.

It's seven o'clock, your alarm goes off. You head for the bathroom. The weather forecast and your current playlist appear on the mirror. In the kitchen, a tablet displays your day's agenda and suggests ideas for an evening out. On the fridge, a shopping list automatically generated from what you've already eaten.

We're not in an episode of the famous futuristic series Black Mirror, but in the test apartment of the Human at home project , HUT. A dwelling equipped with around a hundred sensors gathering information on the uses and habits of its occupants. The connected floor will, for example, provide information on their movements in the apartment, their gait, or other markers of well-being such as eating habits, possible musculoskeletal disorders and postures, which can then be coupled with the environmental data collected.

There will also be sensors linked to the apartment (temperature, atmospheric pressure), to external environmental parameters (humidity, pollution), or even so-called societal sensors linked to language, network connections and so on. We need to define the contours of the future apartment we don't want," explains Alain Foucaran, Director of the Institut d'électronique et des systèmes(IES) and initiator of the project alongside Malo Depincé, Deputy Director of the Dynamique du droit laboratory. Instead of the GAFAMs [Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft] telling us what's good for us, it would be better if it were the human and social sciences. "

An experience "unique in the world

To carry out this ambitious project, the two researchers have brought together a consortium of twelve laboratories. Alongside so-called " hard " sciences such as computer science, they include linguists, economists, anthropologists, psychologists, marketing specialists... In all, some sixty researchers are involved in a project of rare scope for the human sciences.

The experiment will last three years, with a renewal of occupants each year. " There are similar projects where people stay for a day or two, but not for the long term," explains Malo Depincé. " It's a unique experience in the world. All the living labs that exist set a technological challenge, but we're setting a usage challenge," continues Alain Foucaran.

The challenge is to draw up a sort of inventory of " what is accepted or acceptable, interesting or not for the occupant," explains Malo Depincé.We're bound to have conditioned interests. I'm interested if...I agree, on condition that ...". With this in mind, the first residents selected will be students. " They don't have the same resistance as our generation," comments Alain Foucaran. A general shutdown button will nevertheless enable the apartment to be disconnected at the occupants' request.

Inform and protect

A legal challenge too, since the second objective of the experiment is to produce "a catalog of everything a house can learn about its occupants". We surf the Net every day, accept user contracts that are too long or too complicated to be read, use connected speakers " in a way that is far removed from informed consent, or without even being aware that this information passes through a third party - Google, Amazon, Apple", deplores Malo Depincé.

The occupants of the connected apartment will be " informed of the existence of each sensor, all the information that will be collected and how it may be processed by a computer system ". The experiment should enable legal experts to reflect on the legal tools needed to inform consumers simply and effectively about the nature of the data they are providing, but also to protect them as to how it will be used. " There are elements of comfort that should not be denied, but we need to ask ourselves what the trade-offs of artificial intelligence are," concludes Malo Depincé.

Key words : LUM#8, LUM Magazine, Research, Technology