The smart home of tomorrow should make our lives even easier. Vendors like wesmartify will be at the forefront of household robots in the next 5 to 10 years, offering products that look like a "rolling butler" or a "rolling tablet" with a camera, screen and drink holder. The vision: "every household has at least one smart household robot".

wesmartify wants to become a thought leader in household robots. Household robots know their surroundings with a camera. Sensors and microphone record and move through the house on wheels. In the first step, household robots can be used mainly for communication and as a kind of mobile security system. They will look a bit like vacuum cleaners and can support older family members and accompany them around the house. It is also conceivable to provide pets with “treats”. In order to be able to do all this, the house robot must know the faces of the residents of the house and, of course, also recognize them.

Decisive for the success of household robots will be that the manufacturers take precautions to ensure that the moving camera does not pose a threat to privacy. That, for example, the moving household robots cannot be tapped into for monitoring during investigations by judicial order. Even private recordings only have to be made available to users.

The motto then applies here: No data in the “cloud”. All data necessary for navigating through a home is processed on the device. The setup setting, which rooms may or may not be driven into or whether doors in private areas may or may not be opened is entirely up to the user. Permanent complex calculations will be necessary so that the household robot recognizes obstacles and, for example, does not fall down a flight of stairs.

Manufacturers such as the vacuum robot specialist iRobot are preparing for a future with mechanical household helpers that have arms. "We're at a point where we're starting to understand the environment we're operating in enough to be able to do something like this," said iRobot CEO Colin Angle recently. A key question is how much consumers would be willing to pay for such an innovation. "If it's $1,000, it would probably be doable." It will probably be another 10 or 20 years before people can build household robots that can climb stairs, have arms and can be bought for $1,000.

It is also easy to imagine that smart household robots will be equipped with a smart thermostat to control the indoor climate. Or with a smart speaker to activate a large number of interacting smart devices via voice. It is also conceivable that house robots will send push messages if, for example, the refrigerator door is forgotten to be closed or the smoke detector goes off.

It will be exciting to follow developments in this area and make your own contribution.