The speakers began with an introduction to Home Automation, which is a booming market sector with a lot of potential for innovation and exploration. Presently, electrical/electronic appliances need to be controlled individually and require the presence of a user near the device to control it. While remote control can address this problem, existing home automation solutions use one remote controller per device (or a set of devices) and are costly. When a new device is introduced by the same company, it cannot be controlled with an existing remote controller. Presently, there is no unified definition of standards and protocols and the time is right for defining a standard. The speakers presented a solution called yukTI to overcome these problems. The solution is based on Universal Plung and Play (UPnP).

The seminar was highly interactive and attracted 24 participants, including several students from engineering colleges in Bangalore, who participated enthusiastically with a number of questions. Here is some feedback for the event: