A report by ABI Research, ‘The Future of Sensors in the Smart Home’, has predicted a new generation of smart home sensors will exceed four billion installations globally by 2022.

The sensors are embedded in a wide range of smart home devices and appliances to deliver near real-time understanding of even slight changes in home environments.

The ability to transform this data into valuable systems and services will be at the heart of smart home adoption and the future housing market, changing how homes are built, maintained and managed.

The success of smart home voice control devices, such as the Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Apple’s Siri and Apple TV, highlights the ability of audio sensing to change actions in the home and entice collaboration from a wide range of associated application and service providers.

“Smart home sensors will lay the foundation for the automated smart home experience. The advanced sensing capabilities will fine-tune new services and applications from home personalisation to energy and security management,” says ABI Research research director Jonathan Collins.

ABI Research has found smart home integrators and platform providers need to establish how they can effectively leverage sensing to automate changes in the home. At the same time smart home device manufacturers need to leverage familiar sensor capabilities such as sound, light, motion and temperature, along with emerging techniques, including tomographic sensing, to develop intelligent control systems that are able to automatically react and adapt to the home environment.

“Automated home management, grounded in sensing capabilities, has the potential to change how homes are built, owned, shared and lived in. Greater home personalisation and efficiency can underpin a move to smaller, more shareable living spaces, and the builders and the real estate market are already taking note,” concludes Jonathan.