Connecting people full widthLed by Dr Eric Kerrigan, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Our future homes and workplaces will be filled with connected smart devices that help us to improve our quality of life, productivity and health. We will be carrying on us a range of electronic gadgets, from phones and smart wearables to medical devices, which will communicate with each other and the building or allow the building to sense what we are doing. As the number of embedded devices increase and they become more connected, opportunities and challenges will arise that cannot be addressed using current science and technologies.

The vision of this work is therefore to design and use smart connected devices and buildings to contribute to the rapidly growing science of understanding how people live, work and interact with each other and their environment. This understanding will be used to explore ways in which buildings should adapt in real-time and communicate with us in order for our environment to work for us and for us to be happier, healthier and safer therein.