A smart home application that automates the controlling of lighting,…

Concept: Ubiquitous (pervasive) computing integrates connected computational capability into everyday environments and objects.

Its goal is to make digital services available in context, often with little direct attention to a conventional computer.

Application: In this item, the application coordinates lighting, temperature control, entertainment, and appliances within the ordinary home environment. Computation is distributed across everyday devices and operates as an ambient service, which exemplifies ubiquitous computing.

Contrast

• Evolutionary computing applies population-based search mechanisms such as selection, mutation, and recombination to optimization problems; those mechanisms are not what defines the described home automation.

• Nature-inspired computing is a broad umbrella for algorithms modeled on natural phenomena, such as swarms or physical processes; the stem instead describes computation embedded throughout an environment.

• Bio-inspired computing models mechanisms found in living systems, such as neural, genetic, immune, or swarm behavior; no such biological mechanism is specified here.

• Ubiquitous computing places connected computation in everyday objects and spaces so that services are available throughout the environment, matching the smart-home arrangement.

Cross-check: As a cross-check, each named household system is an ordinary object or service enhanced by embedded, networked control rather than an optimization algorithm modeled on nature or biology. Therefore, the example is ubiquitous computing.