CEDIA Tech Guru Pedigo Envisions Smart Home Trends for 2020

The CEDIA Technology Council released Tuesday the first 10 of 100 smart home predictions for the year 2020, including a residential social robot and “the end of the copper wire.” Mixed reality rooms -- comprising augmented and virtual reality experiences -- will begin to replace home theater, said Dave Pedigo, CEDIA senior director-emerging technologies. A holographic cinema experience could be on the horizon, he said. Contact lenses will include displays and cameras, enabling parents to capture their kids’ recitals, he said. High-res video glasses will show media, Pedigo predicted, while “implantables” will be the new wearables. Predictive algorithms will replace conditional logic. With machine learning, programmers won’t encode computers with instructions but will train them instead, he said. The intelligent kitchen will have robotic arms that stir sauces, countertops that act as touch screens and sensors that shut off burners the moment the meat reaches the desired temperature, he predicted. Artificially intelligent plumbing will detect a leak through a moisture sensor, track the failed pipe or coupling, order a machine with high-tech sealant to stop the leak and order a second machine to mop up, he said. The emergence of 16-bit high-frame-rate content means many more colors on displays than we see today. As the need for data bandwidth expands, fiber will replace copper wire in the home. Video, meanwhile, will be decoded and rendered in the same device, he said.