Artificial Intelligence at the Front Door: New Home Tech Trend

Artificial intelligence might just make its way to the front door of your home. The technology is being employed by security giant Vivint Smart Home to recognize the distinct sound of someone knocking at a door. Based on the unique sound signature of the knock, the door could unlock. No more codes to remember or keys to carry.

With this patent pending concept, Vivint Smart Home is blurring the line between two emerging technologies – audio analytics and predictive analytics. Through artificial intelligence (AI), a home-control system could determine how to respond to these sound events.

Artificial Intelligence: Vivint’s Patent

“System and methods for correlating sound events to security and/or home automation system operations,” was filed in October 2015 and published April 20, 2017. The patent application describes the limitations of smart doorbells and facial-recognition systems in identifying guests, and suggests a method of measuring sound signatures to determine who’s knocking or loitering.

A “knock,” according to the patent application, might include:

a rapping, slapping, pounding, or kicking on the door, doorframe, or windows or walls surrounding the door, or may further include clapping, ringing a bell, unlocking a door, turning or jiggling a doorknob, walking up steps, calling out or whistling, approaching in a car, or any other detectable audio signal. 

The sound patterns would be matched to a user’s database of known visitors, and could elicit different responses from a smart-home system.

For example, “[T]he user may input a preference indicating that, where the FedEx deliveryman is identified as knocking at the door, a recorded voice message should be broadcasted at the front door, telling the deliveryman to please leave the package on the bench by the front door.”

Sound patterns with similar characteristics as the FedEx guy’s, might alert homeowners that some kind of delivery person has arrived.

Audio that matches known offenders could trigger the lights in the home to turn on, and a siren to blare. And, although not mentioned in the patent application, those sound fingerprints might be shared among neighbors to alert them of potential miscreants.

Vivint has multiple patents and applications related to triggering an alarm system based on certain inputs or events such as geo-location and sleep-sensing. Sound-sensing would be just another event.

 

Security and home-automation giant Vivint Inc. files patent application for identifying guests through their “sound signatures” and running data through AI engine for predictive analytics.

 

Vivint Smart Home has filed a patent application for using unique sound signatures and predictive analytics to determine who might be knocking on the door and how a security or home-automation system should respond — this from the company that practically invented door-to-door.

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