What makes a Smart Home "smart" is its ability to communicate effortlessly with other devices in the domestic ecosystem and often also with the Internet. For smart home providers, this means their products must be easy to connect and operate to to be successful in the market. "Users want to press the ON- button, and the device should be immediately integrated into the Smart Home and work," explains Volker Adamske, Lead Consultant in the Digital Solution & Services division at TÜV Rheinland. In addition, the devices must work with each other and speak the same language. This should apply now and in the future to create sustainable value for users. At the same time, data protection and data security are the focus of product development. "For consumers, it is crucial that their personal data is and remains protected in all smart home applications," says Günter Martin, Chief Technology Officer at the Center of Excellence (CoE) IoT Privacy at TÜV Rheinland.
Smart Testing: Real use in a laboratory environment
The success of smart home services depends on the comprehensive networking of products, services and data via open interfaces (APIs) and the cloud. The ever-increasing complexity of smart systems presents manufacturers with challenges, because smart home systems are subject to permanent change processes. New components are added and existing ones continuously updated. Any changes in the ecosystem, a change can lead to disruptions in the overall system. Even if a device has worked stable until now and nothing has been changed in it, security gaps or other errors can suddenly occur because the ecosystem shows changes.
"As part of TÜV Rheinland's Smart Testing, the products to be tested are continuously in operation in a laboratory environment that automates and permanently simulates their real use. Similar to practical use, the respective product is integrated into an ecosystem of different devices and applications on the Internet," continues TÜV Rheinland expert Volker Adamske. "With our experience in Smart Testing and on the basis of our Smart Testing concepts, it is possible to check whether IoT applications function simply, securely and above all interoperably.
Further information can be found at www.tuv.com/en/trustiot