The graduation project of American University of Sharjah (AUS) computer science and engineering alumni titled “Internet of Things (IOT)-based interactive dual mode smart home automation” won first place in the poster competition category of the IEEE 37th International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE) held in Las Vegas, USA, in January 2019.

The project was presented by alumni Omar Hamdan, Hassan Shanableh and Inas Zaki, and was supervised by Professors of Computer Science and Engineering Abdul Rahman Al-Ali and Tamer Shanableh. It focused on remote operating, monitoring and controlling home appliances utilizing IoT whereby homeowners and home management service providers can use a standard web browser or a mobile application to operate, monitor and control home appliances through sliding virtual switches, text command or natural language commands.

In addition to 57 posters from around the world, 285 papers were presented at the conference which focused on several issues including Smart Cities, Internet of Things and Internet of Everywhere, Smartphone and Mobile Device Technologies, Consumer Healthcare Systems and others.

“The project is part of the smart cities applications in smart homes. The idea is to empower homeowners and smart building management systems service providers to utilize the smart phones, handheld computing devices and the world wide web to operate, monitor and control home appliances. The project took one academic year to be finalized,” said Dr. Al-Ali. “The students used the latest system-on-chip controllers and communication networks to develop a software operating system. They also utilized the cloud computing storage and data analytics software tools and developed a friendly interface mobile application.”

The winners of the posters competition were as follows:

First Place: American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

Second Place: Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy

Third Place: Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain

Fourth Place: Shibaura Institute of Technology, Japan

Fifth Place: LG Electronics, Korea