Smart mirror for ambient home environment

This paper describes the design and development of a futuristic smart mirror that represents an unobtrusive interface for the ambient home environment. The mirror provides a natural means of interaction through which the residents can control the household smart appliances and access personalized services. Emphasis is also given to ensure convenience in accessing these services with a minimum amount of user intervention. For example, face recognition-based authentication is used to automatically identify the user facing the mirror and provide widget-based interface to access data feeds and other services. A service-oriented architecture has been adopted to develop and deploy the various services, where the mirror interface, the appliances, and the news and data feeds all use Web service communication mechanisms. The smart mirror functionalities have been demonstrated by developing an easily extendable home automation system that facilitates the integration of household appliances and various customized information services.