CES 2017: Sky’s the limit

Las Vegas – Smart home provider Vivint has unveiled Sky, a personal assistant for connected devices in the home.

• Vivint differentiates itself from other smart home product makers by offering an entire eco-system of products on a monthly subscription basis
• Artificially intelligent Sky ensures that each device makes decisions about the home based on the routine of its owners

While every year at CES feels like the year of the smart home, one of the main problems is that, despite the innovation in devices, most consumers do not know how to maximise their potential. And because each device is bought from a different manufacturer, different settings and a different app are required to control each one. ‘That is the painful point of the smart home,’ Matthew Mahar, vice-president of product design at Vivint, tells LS:N Global. ‘There are so many devices that you have to go into multiple apps or you have to go into a single app and interact with multiple devices.’

But with Vivint’s newly launched smart assistant Sky, the smartphone is no longer a remote control for devices. Instead, the roles are reversed as Sky asks the home-owner whether he or she wants it to take action. In time, Sky learns answers and will begin to make decisions on its own based on occupancy patterns. ‘It’s a system of progressive autonomy that gets better over time,’ says Mahar.