Vision
Our product teaches the users sustainable habits in order to live a sustainable life as they grow up. This will also mean their parents save money on electricity and water and their kids will start forming habits without them around.
This will best be suited for the house and specifically the child’s room or play room where they will likely be on their own and in a space that is for them. We hope to eventually expand TCAS to the entire house but we will start off focusing on children’s rooms.
Our clients will be the parents and our users can be defined as families with children between the ages of 6-10 years old. The parents will be help to implement the system but the children will be the physical users of the system.
Stakeholders include companies who are interested in the development and teaching of children, as well as companies who are invested in sustainability. Such companies include Disney, the EPA, and research institutions.
As a parents this TCAS helps to teach their children about sustainability from a young age to form habits from a young age. This will also reduce power and water costs in the household which will save the family money while helping the environment.
A major problem today is the lack of information about sustainability. Lots of kids grow up without really understanding how everything they do has an impact on the environment around them. While parents can teach kids they aren’t always around to make sure they are acting in a sustainable way and therefore they waste a lot of water, energy and other resources.
This will be an effective and fun way to teach kids about how their habits impact the planet. It will also start them off to form habits early in life and when it’s easier for them to keep up good habits. For their parents it will also help reduce the waste that children have since they are unaware of how their actions cause waste. We will specifically look at when lights are left on in a room when it is sunny outside. They can use the sunlight for light instead of turning on the lights.
AmI Steps
| AmI Step | Description |
| Sensing | The TCAS will sense if a child is in the room or not, possibly a motion sensor. This will then start the reasoning process. It must also sense the weather outside. Last, it will sense the brightness of the room, to determine if enough light is being let into the room. |
| Reasoning | It will then take the sensing data and determine if the lights in the room need to be turned off. First it must determine if there is someone in the room for a length of time. Next it will look at the conditions outside, and reason if it is sunny outside or not. If outside conditions are ideal it will prompt acting. During all of this the system will measure brightness and this will then adapt as the user continues to use the system. |
| Acting | After reasoning the system will act based on the conditions it has sensed and analyzed. For our situation if the weather outside is optimal to use natural light instead of artificial lighting. It will then either turn out the lights by itself or it will sound an alarm or music to alert the child. |
| Interacting | Once it alerts the user that they could change the environment or that the system will change the environment it starts interacting with the child. This includes explaining to the child why they should turn the lights off, and how using the lights while they don’t have to is a waste of energy. Eventually it will reward the child for not turning on the lights or acting in a sustainable way. |
AmI Features
| Features | Description | |
| Responsive | The system is sensitive to the changes in the sunlight and the brightness in the room. As it sense these changes then the system records this data and acts accordingly. | |
| Sensitive | By reacting and then talking to the user the system is responsive and will act with the collected information. Also by rewarding the child for acting in the most sustainable way the system is responding to how the environment changes. | |
| Adaptive | We hope to have a brightness sensor that will record the different brightnesses and determine at what times and at what brightness is ideal to have the lights off. | |
| Transparent | The system will not noticed by the user until the interaction. | |
| Ubiquitous | To Be Defined | |
| Intelligent | Since the system will be able to sense and reason on it’s own it will be an intelligent sytem. | |