Although the dust has officially settled on Amazon Alexa’s big breakout at CES 2017, the voice-activated service’s wide-reaching coverage continues to grow. Just this week, the Virginia-based real estate company Brookfield Residential unveiled a partnership with Amazon which would bring voice-enabled automation to its new line of houses, appropriately titled The Smart Home. Officially announced in December, Brookfield says it’s now offering in-person, daily tours at the Avendale housing community in northern Virginia.
Developed by Brookfield’s Washington D.C. division, The Smart Home leans on innovative 21st-century tech to help make its owners’ day-to-day lives abundantly easier. With Alexa integration baked completely into the infrastructure of the house, Smart Home buyers would have the ability to lock or unlock their doors, turn on or off the lights, check a video feed of their security camera, pre-heat the oven, water their lawn, among many other features.
“This is how we’re all going to live,” said Brookfield’s division president Robert Hubbell. “There’s no reason to wait. We couldn’t be more thrilled to offer voice-enabled automation to our homebuyers at many of our new communities.”
What is perhaps most impressive is that Brookfield created custom prompts, which allow users to trigger multiple actions with a single command. For instance, if a Smart Home owner were to say, “Alexa, turn on Relax,” the system would dim the lights, lower the shades, flip on a relaxing playlist, and turn on a soft star panel on the ceiling.
“This is the most technologically advanced home that we’ve ever built,” Hubbell said. “But this is only the beginning.”
As Amazon’s Alexa voice-activated platform continues to integrate with a wider range of appliances and gadgets, it’s certainly not surprising to see a forward-thinking real estate company partner with the corporation to bring it to its homes. What is surprising, however, is just how quickly a company like Brookfield decided to collaborate with Amazon to bring such a useful service to its customers.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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With AI progressing so fast, it's only a matter of time before we start getting AI companions like the ones we used to see in movies like R2-D2, Wall-E, or Baymax. Now, Singapore-based OKA Technology has unveiled Mori, a cute little AI companion that looks less like a conventional home robot and more like someone turned the Pokémon Foongus into a table lamp.
Mori isn't meant to clean your house or control your smart home, but to serve as what OKA calls a "Nature Companion." It uses subtle movements, warm lighting, nature-inspired sounds, and small reactions to make its presence around the house feel calming rather than distracting. Mori can sit quietly while you read, sway along to music, welcome you when you enter a room, or encourage you to slow down for a moment without requiring a screen or a conversation.
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