Requirements and Mechanisms for Smart Home Updates

Abstract

The interconnection of sensors and actuators of smart home devices creates dependencies that allow for ubiquitous services. These devices can be subject to transformative changes through software updates that might lead to unintended consequences. Users have no tools to predict the negative consequences caused by updating their smart home. In this paper, we address this problem and propose mechanisms that enable organized update planning in a smart home. We compare self-description standard approaches that allow reasoning about resulting functionality before updates are installed. Updating devices to their latest versions is not necessarily the best way to update smart homes, therefore we discuss multi-objective optimization in the update process. Finally, outsourcing functionality to external providers might reduce the complexity of certain tasks, but can also pose threats if the wrong tasks are offloaded.