Though personally I think we’re barking up the wrong tree by trying to smarten up every appliance. The objective of having remote control/sensing of all your stuff would be better achieved by having a single robot “butler” that can check on state and interface with everything, but the appliances themselves should be simple and easily controllable. As long as there’s a universal communications standard for all devices to be able to communicate with the “butler” the mechanical interfacing could basically be designed in as accessibility features. That way the software and smart capabilities are all in one package that can be upgraded or modified instead of scattered across a bunch of individual things that are expensive to replace or repair.
I’m basically imagining a drone that runs around the house along a rail track on the ceiling and has a little dongle it can plug into devices to control them like Star Wars droids. Bonus points if the method of control is purely mechanical without needing much computing power in the appliance at all.
The reason this will never happen, of course, is obvious. You’ll never get everyone to retrofit their houses for a robo-rail.
