IOT Devices in the Hotel Room

Intriguing aspects of IOT in hospitality.   Has been less in the area of assistants than I expected.

Shedding Light (and Sound) on Hidden IoT Devices in Your Next Hotel Room

Carnegie Mellon University Human-Computer Interaction Institute  By Daniel Tkacik

A study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)'s Human-Computer Interaction Institute and CyLab Security and Privacy Institute, working with colleagues from China’s Xi'an Jiaotong University, explored methods for detecting hidden Internet of Things (IoT) devices, using light and sound. The authors considered three locator/detector designs—placing a light-emitting diode (LED) on a device; placing an LED and beeping mechanism on a device; and a contextualized picture that showed the device in position, taken by the hospitality host. Participants pinpointed devices much faster with locator designs than without them, and about two-thirds of participants preferred the LED-plus-beeper design. CMU's Jason Hong said, "Our hope is that the findings in this paper can help industry and policymakers in adopting the idea of locators for IoT devices ... "