28 TIME December 11, 2017
HOME SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT ONE THING: SECURITY. AND SECURITY IS
the top reason people are interested in smart-home tech, according to a 2016 survey by Comcast and
gadget-maker August Home. But advancements in artificial intelligence and computer vision have made
smart cameras capable of offering much more than just extra protection.Cameras that want to do a lot more than watch
By Lisa EadiciccoThe ViewSmart Home
Accept deliveries
Amazon wants to eliminate worrying about
your packages. Amazon Key ($249),
launched on Nov. 8, is a service that uses
the company’s newCloud Cam and a smart
lock to grant home access to delivery
workers. Here’s how it works: Amazon
verifies a delivery is taking place; the
Cloud Cam turns on and prompts the lock
to open. Users receive notifications and
can view the delivery on their phones in
real time. “One of the things our customers
have concerns about is, If I’ve got packages
on my doorstep, could they disappear if
somebody walks by and takes them?” says
Charlie Tritschler, vice president of devices
at Amazon. Of course, Amazon Key requires
that users feel comfortable allowing
strangers into their home. Tritschler points
to the camera’s ability to encrypt stored
video content and the system’s secure
authentication mechanisms as evidence
that the company takes privacy seriously.
Watch the kids
Startup Lighthouse AI’s gadget ($299)
combines a security camera and a virtual
assistant. The camera uses a mix of
computer vision, 3-D sensors and natural
language understanding to identify people
and distinguish between humans and pets.
This capability isn’t unique but, unlike many
competing cameras, Lighthouse uses this
information to respond to specific and
complex commands, such as “If you don’t
see anyone with the dog between 12 p.m.
and 2 p.m. on the weekdays, let me know”
or “What did John do while I was out?”
Since Lighthouse can recognize family
members’ faces, it will know if someone is
in the home who shouldn’t be. Lighthouse
also uses bank-level encryption to protect
any data you share with it. CEO Alex
Teichman says the team prioritized security
when developing the camera, and that
these other features naturally evolved as a
side effect of that research.Spot emergencies
The Cherry Home (starts at $899) takes
identification one step further.It can detect
a person’s posture, their individual limbs
and the way they move in order to identify
them and understand whether they’re
behaving normally. “It can tell who it is
because every person has different body
measurements,” says co-founder Nick
Davidov. “Everybody moves differently and
walks differently.” The Cherry Home can
also detect emergencies. When the camera
system starts shipping next year, it will be
capable of sending alerts when it believes
someone has fallen down, for example. That
could be particularly important considering
the number of people over age 75 living
alone is expected to nearly double between
2015 and 2035, according to a Harvard
University study. The firm is working with
health care organizations to gather data so
that it can one day help detect early signs of
stroke or heart attack.ILLUSTRATION BY BENJAMIN CURRIE FOR TIME