Virginia Tech Wins Smart Home Design Competition

Virginia Tech has won a smart house design competition with their FutureHaus concept.

The FutureHaus offers the ability to customize your house according to your needs by selecting modular panels that compose the rooms and make use of the latest technology that is currently available.

The concept was created by a team of students from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.  The team traveled to Dubai in order to participate in the Solar Decathlon Middle East, a contest created by the U.S. Department of Energy. The aim of the contest is to encourage universities from all over the world to create, present and improve concepts for hybrid houses that use both conventional energy and solar power.

The win crowns over two decades of hard work, research &development and engineering trials. Two students build the house in span of a month, showing that it can be assembled by anyone.

This year the completion took place at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park. Participants were challenged to create a house that could withstand the heat, that and humidity of the desert climate. In addition, the house must rely completely on solar energy and use advanced technology that maximizes the efficiency.

The FutureHaus can adapt to a variety of environments due to its sliding modules that are easy to assemble. They were developed in collaboration with Accuride International, one of the greatest manufacturers of sliding solutions.

Accuride brought in a high-performance sliding solution that allows FutureHaus to be highly customizable as many features of the house can be dynamically modified in order to suit a variety of needs.

FutureHaus also offers a variety of smart sensors that can adjust the background conditions by using voice, gesture and proximity detection in order to make the desired changes. The smart house also boasts advanced security features among which we can count facial recognition and fingerprint scanning.

The team received a prize that is worth approximately $250,000.

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