智能家居
Tech firms think the home is the next big computing platform科技公司认为家宅是下一个大型计算平台
Many of the technologies needed to make smart homes work already exist让智能家居运转所需的许多技术已经实现
Sep 12th 2019
FILM BUFFS will tell you that watching a movie on the big screen is a much more immersive experience than watching it at home. But if Matthew Ball gets his way, that might not be true for much longer. Mr Ball—who used to be head of strategy at Amazon Studios, the tech firm’s TV division—spends a lot of time thinking about the future of film and TV. He is especially interested in the possibilities offered by connected, computerised homes.
电影爱好者会告诉你，在大屏幕上看电影比在家看电影更有身临其境的感觉。但如果马修·鲍尔(Matthew Ball)能如愿以偿，这种情况可能不会持续太久。鲍尔先生曾经是亚马逊公司电视部门的战略主管，他花了很多时间思考电影和电视的未来。他对联网的电脑化家庭所提供的发展潜力特别感兴趣。
Imagine an action film, he says, in which a smart television, equipped with the sorts of gaze-tracking cameras already used in smartphones, can wait until it has a viewer’s full attention before showing a monster leaping out from behind a door. Or a horror film which commandeers a house’s lights and makes them flicker at the appropriate moment, or plays eerie sounds—even whispering the viewer’s name—from speakers in another room.
他说，想象一下，在一部动作电影中，一台配备了智能手机上已经使用的那种视线追踪摄像头的智能电视，可以等到观众完全集中注意力后，才会显示出一个怪物从门后跳出来。或者是一部恐怖电影，它霸占了一所房子的灯光，让它们在适当的时刻闪烁，或者播放怪异的声音——甚至是在另一个房间的音箱里低声说出观众的名字。
词汇
gaze-tracking/视线跟踪
commandeer/征用；霸占
For now, Mr Ball admits that such ideas are experimental. But many of the technologies necessary to make them work already exist. Consumers can buy smart light bulbs, such as Hue from Philips, a Dutch electronics giant, which can be switched on or off by phone or voice and can generate thousands of tones and shades. Viewers of “12 Monkeys”, an American science-fiction TV series released in 2015, can download an app that will sync with their light bulbs, automatically changing their colour and brightness to match the mood of an episode moment by moment.
目前，波尔先生承认这些想法都是实验性的。但是许多必要的技术已经存在。消费者可以购买智能灯泡，比如荷兰电子巨头飞利浦的Hue，它可以通过电话或语音开关，产生数千种色调和阴影。观看2015年上映的美国科幻电视剧《12只猴子》(12 Monkeys)的观众可以下载一款应用，该应用可以使他们的灯泡同步，自动改变灯泡的颜色和亮度，以配合每一集的气氛。
Consumers can use voice-activated window-blinds and mattresses that track heart rate and sleep patterns
消费者可以使用声控窗帘和床垫来跟踪心率和睡眠模式
GSMA Intelligence, the research arm of a mobile-industry trade body, reckons that smart homes will be the biggest part of the consumer side of the IoT (see chart). For now, most of the applications are more prosaic than powering a futuristic home cinema. Besides light bulbs, technophile consumers can use voice-activated window-blinds, robotic vacuum cleaners and mattresses that track heart rate, movement and sleep patterns (and also nag you about your poor “sleep hygiene”). Wifi-connected, camera-equipped fridges can let you check their contents from anywhere in the world.
移动产业贸易机构的研究机构GSMA Intelligence估计，智能家居将成为物联网消费领域的最大组成部分(见图表)。目前，大多数应用程序相对于支持为未来的家庭影院而言要乏味得多。除了电灯泡，技术爱好者还可以使用声控百叶窗、机器人吸尘器和用于跟踪心率、运动和睡眠模式的床垫(还可以唠叨你糟糕的“睡眠卫生”)。配有摄像头的无线网络冰箱可以让你在世界任何地方查看冰箱里的东西。
词汇
Prosaic/平凡的，乏味的；散文体的
IoT/物联网（Internet of Things）
Security is another popular use, says Alexandra Rehak, who heads the IoT division of Ovum, a firm of tech analysts. Smart doorbells have built-in surveillance cameras and motion detectors. Their users can choose to let visitors in by unlocking the door over the phone.
科技分析公司Ovum物联网部门负责人Alexandra Rehak说，安全是另一种主流的用途。智能门铃内置了监控摄像头和运动探测器。他们的用户可以选择通过电话（听筒）开门让访客进入。
词汇
Surveillance/监督；监视
IDC, a market-analysis firm, reckons 833m smart-home gadgets of various sorts will be sold in 2019, a number that it forecasts will double by 2023. Most of these devices sell themselves on a combination of comfort, convenience and cost-saving.
市场分析公司IDC估计，到2019年，各类智能家居设备的销量将达到8.33亿部，预计到2023年，这个数字将翻一番。这些设备大多以舒适、方便和节约成本为卖点。
And he built a crooked house
他，建了一座歪歪扭扭的房子
It all sounds good in theory. But Ben Wood, the chief of research at CCS Insight, another firm of analysts, says that installing and maintaining smart gadgets—let alone trying to get them to work together—can be a chore. “It’s a very Heath Robinson kind of patchwork, a jigsaw puzzle of connectivity.” He should know: besides his day job, Mr Wood is a keen tinkerer who has converted his own house into a home smart enough to win a European award in 2017, complete with voice-activated lighting and windows, room-by-room heating, phone-controlled speakers and a camera-equipped door that can be locked or unlocked from anywhere in the world.
从理论上讲，这一切听起来都不错。但另一家分析公司CCS Insight的研究主管本•伍德（Ben Wood）说，安装和维护智能设备可能是件苦差事，更不用说让它们协同工作了。“这是一种非常像希斯·罗宾逊(Heath Robinson)式的拼贴，一种连接的拼图游戏。“他清楚地知道:除了他的日常工作,伍德是一个敏锐的爱动手琢磨的人，他将自己的房子改造成一间足以赢得2017年度欧洲奖的智慧房屋,配有声控照明和窗户,逐个房间的供暖系统,手机控制的音箱和一个配有摄像头的门,使得他无论身处何方，都能够开启或者锁上自家的门。
词汇
Jigsaw/拼图玩具
Tinkerer/修补匠；多面手
Making it work required installing 2km of network cabling, all of which feeds back into a cupboard containing a set of rack-mounted computers that would not look out of place in a data centre. Another problem is that products from one manufacturer often fail to work well with those from another. Standards do exist: Zigbee and Z-wave are wireless networking protocols designed for the type of low-power radios found in smart-home gadgetry. But many firms either use proprietary standards or implement existing standards in ways that prevent their products working with those from other companies.
但要想让它运行，需要安装2公里长的网络电缆，所有的电缆都反馈到一个柜中，柜中装有一组机架式的计算机，这些计算机在数据中心看起来不会显得格格不入。另一个问题是，来自一个制造商的产品常常不能与来自另一个制造商的产品很好地适配。标准确实存在:Zigbee和Z-wave是一种无线网络协议，专为智能家居设备中使用的低功耗无线电设计。但许多公司要么使用专有标准，要么以某种方式实施现有标准，以防止其产品与其他公司的产品兼容。
词汇
Cupboard/ 碗柜；食橱
Protocol/协议；草案；礼仪
Many companies are involved. Tim Hatt at GSMA Intelligence says that telecoms firms are keen to find new, higher-margin businesses rather than simply acting as “bit pipes”, so they have built smart-home offerings as well. Vodafone, a telecoms company, advertises the V-Home hub as a central control point for smart-home devices. SK Telecom, a South Korean firm, has the Nugu. AT&T, an American company, offers its Smart Home Manager. Others are startups, such as Wink, which launched with backing from General Electric. In Britain, even British Gas, a former state-owned energy monopoly, has got in on the act. It launched Hive, a smart-home ecosystem in 2013.
许多公司都参与其中。GSMA Intelligence的蒂姆•哈特(Tim Hatt)表示，电信公司热衷于寻找新的、利润率更高的业务，而不只是充当“比特管道”，因此它们也推出了智能家居产品。沃达丰，一家电信公司，宣传V-Home中心是智能家居设备的中央控制点。韩国SK电讯公司拥有Nugu。美国电话电报公司(AT&T)提供智能家居管理服务。其他还有一些初创企业，比如Wink，它是在通用电气(General Electric)的支持下成立的。在英国，甚至前国有能源垄断企业英国天然气公司(British Gas)也加入了这一行列。它在2013年推出了智能家居生态系统Hive。
That fragmentation means risks for early adopters and highlights some of the problems involved in installing gadgets that rely on external services. Last year Logitech, a Swiss company, stopped supporting its Harmony Link smart hub, which was designed to get smartphones to act as universal remote controls. In 2016 Revolv, a smart-home startup that had been bought by Google, announced that its app and home hub were being abandoned, leaving the firm’s customers high and dry. “My house will stop working,” wrote one disgruntled user.
这种碎片化对早期采用者意味着风险，并凸显了安装依赖外部服务的小工具所涉及的一些问题。去年，瑞士公司罗技(Logitech)停止了对其Harmony Link智能中心的支持，该中心旨在让智能手机充当通用遥控器。2016年，被谷歌收购的智能家居初创企业Revolv宣布，放弃其应用程序和home hub，这让公司的客户陷入困境。一位不满的用户写道:“我的房子要停工了。”
The companies best placed to solve the fragmentation problem, and thus to dominate the business, are the existing internet giants—and specifically Google and Amazon, thanks to their lead in the fast-growing smart-speaker market. Until fairly recently, says Mr Wood, the assumption was that smart homes would be controlled from phones. But, he says, the reality is different. “Pulling out your phone, unlocking it, tapping an app, then using it to turn the lights on, is much more complicated and annoying than simply walking across the room and pushing a button”. Voice, he says, is by far the most convenient user-interface.
那些最优先解决碎片化的问题，从而主导业务的公司是现有的互联网巨头，特别是谷歌和亚马逊，这得益于它们在快速增长的智能音箱市场上的领先地位。伍德表示，直到最近，人们还以为智能家居将由手机控制。但是，他说，现实是不同的。“拿出你的手机，解锁，点击一个应用程序，然后用它来开灯，这比在房间里走过去按下一个按钮要复杂得多，也烦人得多。”他说，语音是目前为止最方便的用户界面。
Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home, the two firms’ smart-speaker products, already have greater market penetration than rival smart-home hubs. Canalys, a market-research firm, reckons that 78m smart speakers were sold in 2018, more than double the number in 2017, with Amazon and Google accounting for roughly a third each, and products from Alibaba, Xiaomi and Baidu, a trio of Chinese tech giants, making up most of the rest (see chart). According to surveys, around a quarter of American smart-speaker owners already use them to control at least one other device.
亚马逊的Alexa和谷歌Home，这两家公司的智能音箱产品，已经比竞争对手的智能家居中心拥有更大的市场渗透率。市场研究公司Canalys估计,在2018年有78000000个智能音箱被售出,这是2017年的两倍多,亚马逊和谷歌占了大约三分之一,从阿里巴巴,小米和百度,三个中国科技巨头的产品来看,占据了其余市场的绝大部分(见上述图表)。调查显示，大约四分之一的美国智能音箱用户已经在使用智能音箱控制至少一种其他设备。
词汇
Penetration/渗透；突破
Having a home’s smart gadgets controlled via a central hub simplifies things for consumers. Consumer-goods firms are increasingly keen to ensure that their devices are capable of working with Google and Amazon’s speakers. Many tech firms have set up certification programmes, as well as smartphone-style app stores aimed at third-party developers keen to integrate Alexa and Google Home with their own products.
通过中心集线器控制家庭智能设备可以简化消费者的操作。消费品公司越来越热衷于确保他们的设备能够与谷歌和亚马逊的音箱兼容。许多科技公司已经设立了认证项目，以及智能手机风格的应用商店，面向于那些热衷于将Alexa和谷歌Home与自己的产品集成在一起的第三方开发者。
The tech firms are chasing two prizes, says Ms Rehak. The first is that, through a combination of standardisation and convenience, those who master the smart-speaker market will come to occupy the same dominant position as Google and Apple do in the smartphone market.
瑞克（Rehak）女士说，科技公司正在追逐两个奖励。首先，通过标准化和便捷性的结合，那些掌握智能音箱市场的公司将会在智能手机市场占据与谷歌和苹果一样的主导地位。
The second is that connected homes offer a rich seam of data to be mined for consumer preferences. “What these companies are really good at is making use of data to sell you things you think you want,” she says. Smart televisions report the programmes their users are watching. A camera-equipped fridge might reveal useful information on its owners’ eating habits. Even simple data on when the lights are on can reveal occupancy patterns, or when a home owner is awake or asleep. There are already reports of arguments between smart-device makers and the tech giants over who has access to those data, and how much must be collected.
第二，联网房屋提供了丰富的数据，可供挖掘消费者偏好。她说:“这些公司真正擅长的是利用数据向你出售你认为自己想要的东西。”智能电视报告用户正在观看的节目。一台装有摄像头的冰箱可能会透露主人的饮食习惯。即使是关于灯亮着的时间的简单数据，也能揭示入住模式，或房主是醒着还是睡着。已经有报道称，智能设备制造商和科技巨头之间就谁有权访问这些数据以及必须收集多少数据展开了争论。
As for consumers, Ms Rehak thinks that many are still ignorant about the basic trade-off of the smart-home model, in which a service is provided in return for “collecting a whole bunch of personal data”. Even among the cognoscenti, there are differing opinions. “I love this stuff,” says Mr Wood. “But I have some colleagues who refuse to have any of these things in their houses at all.”
至于消费者，瑞克女士认为许多人仍然不知道智能家居模式的基本权衡，即提供一项服务来换取“收集大量个人数据”。即使是行家也有不同的看法。伍德说:“我喜欢这种东西。”，“但我的一些同事拒绝把这些东西放在家里。”
词汇
Ignorant/无知的；愚昧的