Domestic technology is the incorporation of

applied science Applied science is the use of the scientific method and knowledge obtained via conclusions from the method to attain practical goals. It includes a broad range of disciplines such as engineering and medicine. Applied science is often contrasted ...

into the home. There are multiple aspects of domestic technology. On one level, there are

home appliance A home appliance, also referred to as a domestic appliance, an electric appliance or a household appliance, is a machine which assists in household functions such as cooking, cleaning and food preservation. Appliances are divided into three t ...

home automation Home automation or domotics is building automation for a home, called a smart home or smart house. A home automation system will monitor and/or control home attributes such as lighting, climate, entertainment systems, and appliances. It ...

and other devices commonly used in the home, such as

clothes dryer A clothes dryer, also known as tumble dryer or simply dryer, is a powered household appliance that is used to remove moisture from a load of clothing, bedding and other textiles, usually shortly after they are washed in a washing machine. Many d ...

s and

washing machine A washing machine (laundry machine, clothes washer, washer, or simply wash) is a home appliance used to wash laundry. The term is mostly applied to machines that use water as opposed to dry cleaning (which uses alternative cleaning fluids and ...

s. On another level, domestic technology recognizes the use of applied science to construct homes to achieve a particular goal, such as

energy efficiency Energy efficiency may refer to: * Energy efficiency (physics), the ratio between the useful output and input of an energy conversion process ** Electrical efficiency, useful power output per electrical power consumed ** Mechanical efficiency, a ra ...

or self-sufficiency. For more information, read about self-sufficient homes. It has been claimed that domestic technology has led to decreases in the time people spend on household work, although the factual basis of this claim is disputed.

Types of domestic technology

Many technologies are now routinely used around the home. For example, microwave ovens and washing machines, among others.

Cleaning equipment

Broom A broom (also known in some forms as a broomstick) is a cleaning tool consisting of usually stiff fibers (often made of materials such as plastic, hair, or corn husks) attached to, and roughly parallel to, a cylindrical handle, the broomstick. ...

* Mop *

Sink A sink is a bowl-shaped plumbing fixture for washing hands, dishwashing, and other purposes. Sinks have a tap (faucet) that supply hot and cold water and may include a spray feature to be used for faster rinsing. They also include a drain ...

Shower A shower is a place in which a person bathes under a spray of typically warm or hot water. Indoors, there is a drain in the floor. Most showers have temperature, spray pressure and adjustable showerhead nozzle. The simplest showers have a ...

* Bath *

Vacuum cleaner A vacuum cleaner, also known simply as a vacuum or a hoover, is a device that causes suction in order to remove dirt from floors, upholstery, draperies, and other surfaces. It is generally electrically driven. The dirt is collected by either a ...

Dishwasher A dishwasher is a machine that is used to clean dishware, cookware, and cutlery automatically. Unlike manual dishwashing, which relies heavily on physical scrubbing to remove soiling, the mechanical dishwasher cleans by spraying hot water, ...

Washing machine A washing machine (laundry machine, clothes washer, washer, or simply wash) is a home appliance used to wash laundry. The term is mostly applied to machines that use water as opposed to dry cleaning (which uses alternative cleaning fluids and ...

Clothes dryer A clothes dryer, also known as tumble dryer or simply dryer, is a powered household appliance that is used to remove moisture from a load of clothing, bedding and other textiles, usually shortly after they are washed in a washing machine. Many d ...

Hair dryer A hair dryer, hairdryer or blow dryer is an electromechanical device that blows ambient or hot air over damp hair to speed the evaporation of water to dry the hair. Blow dryers enable better control over the shape and style of hair, by acceler ...

Electric lighting

* Fluorescent light bulb *

Incandescent light bulb An incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe is an electric light with a wire filament heated until it glows. The filament is enclosed in a glass bulb with a vacuum or inert gas to protect the filament from oxida ...

LED light bulb An LED lamp or LED light bulb is an electric light that produces light using light-emitting diodes (LEDs). LED lamps are significantly more energy-efficient than equivalent incandescent lamps and can be significantly more efficient than m ...

Cooking appliances

Barbecue Barbecue or barbeque (informally BBQ in the UK, US, and Canada, barbie in Australia and braai in South Africa) is a term used with significant regional and national variations to describe various cooking methods that use live fire and smoke ...

* Bread maker *

Blender A blender (sometimes called a mixer or liquidiser in British English) is a kitchen and laboratory appliance used to mix, crush, purée or emulsify food and other substances. A stationary blender consists of a blender container with a rotating me ...

Coffee machine A coffeemaker, coffee maker or coffee machine is a cooking appliance used to brew coffee. While there are many different types of coffeemakers the two most common brewing principles use gravity or pressure to move hot water through coffee gr ...

Faucet A tap (also spigot or faucet: see usage variations) is a valve controlling the release of a liquid or gas. Nomenclature United Kingdom * Tap is used in the United Kingdom and most of the Commonwealth for any everyday type of valve, part ...

Food processor A food processor is a kitchen appliance used to facilitate repetitive tasks in the preparation of food. Today, the term almost always refers to an electric-motor-driven appliance, although there are some manual devices also referred to as "food ...

Microwave oven A microwave oven (commonly referred to as a microwave) is an electric oven that heats and cooks food by exposing it to electromagnetic radiation in the microwave frequency range. This induces polar molecules in the food to rotate and produce ...

* Mixer *

Oven upA double oven A ceramic oven An oven is a tool which is used to expose materials to a hot environment. Ovens contain a hollow chamber and provide a means of heating the chamber in a controlled way. In use since antiquity, they have been use ...

Rotimatic Rotimatic is an automated kitchen appliance that makes flatbread. It was invented by Indian-origin couple Pranoti Nagarkar and Rishi Israni in 2008. Rotimatic uses machine learning to make bread and takes about a 90 seconds to make one roti. It ...

Food storage and preservation

Food storage container Food storage containers are widespread in use throughout the world and have probably been in use since the first human civilizations. Early civilizations In early civilizations cereal grains such as maize, wheat, barley etc. were stored in large ...

Canning Canning is a method of food preservation in which food is processed and sealed in an airtight container ( jars like Mason jars, and steel and tin cans). Canning provides a shelf life that typically ranges from one to five years, althoug ...

* Refrigerator

Home maintenance

* Groundskeeping equipment *

Garden tool A garden tool is any one of many tools made for gardening and landscaping, which overlap with the range of tools made for agriculture and horticulture. Garden tools can be divided into hand tools and power tools. Hand tools Today's garden too ...

s * Paint sprayer

Air conditioning

Air conditioner Air conditioning, often abbreviated as A/C or AC, is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space to achieve a more comfortable interior environment (sometimes referred to as 'comfort cooling') and in some cases also strictly controlling ...

* Central heating unit * Fan

Computer systems

Data storage device Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are cons ...

* Personal computer * Telephone *

Video game console A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to ...

Knitting machine A knitting machine is a device used to create knitted fabrics in a semi or fully automated fashion. There are numerous types of knitting machines, ranging from simple spool or board templates with no moving parts to highly complex mechanisms c ...

* Plumbing * Home router

Power generation

Solar panels A solar cell panel, solar electric panel, photo-voltaic (PV) module, PV panel or solar panel is an assembly of photovoltaic solar cells mounted in a (usually rectangular) frame, and a neatly organised collection of PV panels is called a phot ...

Wind Turbine A wind turbine is a device that converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. Hundreds of thousands of large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, now generate over 650 gigawatts of power, with 60 GW added each year. W ...

Home security

Surveillance cameras Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly tr ...

Alarm systems An alarm device is a mechanism that gives an audible, visual or other kind of alarm signal to alert someone to a problem or condition that requires urgent attention. Alphabetical musical instruments Etymology The word ''alarm'' comes from t ...

Electronic lock An electronic lock (or electric lock) is a locking device which operates by means of electric current. Electric locks are sometimes stand-alone with an electronic control assembly mounted directly to the lock. Electric locks may be connected to ...

Home automation

In the 21st century, especially by the 2010s, home automation has increasingly been introduced into the modern household, colloquially referred to as smart home technology. While the technology was already in development in the 1990s, only in the next two decades was

Local Area Network A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building. By contrast, a wide area network (WAN) not only covers a larger ...

ing ubiquitous in the home, thanks to the introduction of

computer networking A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections ar ...

. Since modern home networks often make use of wireless networking (e.g.

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio w ...

), modern automation can easily be set up without having to run wires through the building. Alternatively, they can be connected to wired networks.

Types of home automation

* Smart home appliances * Automatic vacuum cleaners and other

Domestic robot A domestic robot is a type of service robot, an autonomous robot that is primarily used for household chores, but may also be used for education, entertainment or therapy. While most domestic robots are simplistic, some are connected to Wi-Fi h ...

s *

Smart locks A smart lock is an electromechanical lock that is designed to perform locking and unlocking operations on a door when it receives a prompt via an electronic keypad, biometric sensor, access card, Bluetooth, or Wi-FI from a registered mobile devic ...

Smart speaker A smart speaker is a type of loudspeaker and voice command device with an integrated virtual assistant that offers interactive actions and hands-free activation with the help of one "hot word" (or several "hot words"). Some smart speakers can a ...

s, with voice controlled digital personal assistants.

Concerns towards home automation

Unlike older forms of domestic technology, smart appliances are Internet-facing, and there have been many concerns that

cyberattacks A cyberattack is any offensive maneuver that targets computer information systems, computer networks, infrastructures, or personal computer devices. An attacker is a person or process that attempts to access data, functions, or other restricte ...

may be conducted on insecure home appliances. A kind of attack is to deploy malware on smart home appliances known as botnets, which can be controlled by a remote attacker.

References

External links

ICS 97.040.30 Domestic refrigerating appliances
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