Research
From the IT Lab
Dimming the light by voice, turning on the heating in the bathroom already from the bed and on leaving the house to be reminded to close open windows: These are the tasks of a smart home.
In 2013 – even before the market launch of Google Home or Amazon Alexa – we researched the smart home and developed a comprehensive prototype for a distributed home monitoring, information and automation system. Numerous devices such as smoke detectors, dimmers, microphones, motion detectors or webcams could be integrated into the flexible system via the wireless communication standard Z-Wave.
Even discarded smartphones or tablets could find a new use as sensors and actuators in this widely scalable overall system. Devices could be switched intuitively via voice recognition and a call for help could be sent in an emergency.
With our predecessor, the software house Phenom IT, we supported the project DaPriM - a privacy-enhancing technology based on digital rights management of the FH Münster as a project partner from the very beginning in 2010. The goal of the three-year research project was to develop a technology that promotes data protection.
The basic idea: A trusted system stores and processes data in compliance with digital rights. Direct access to raw data entered is impossible. Only precisely specified processed data is output. (Raw) data remains irreversibly locked under hardware anchoring.
The use of DaPriM technology allows personal data to be handled securely. Designing the technology into products that are ready for use offers confidence with regard to the processing of data that is not yet offered by any product available on the market.
Further project parners were the FH Muenster, the Chair for Network and Data Security at the Ruhr University Bochum, das Independent State Center for Data Protection Schleswig-Holstein (ULD) and the 2B Advice GmbH.
The project was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of the FH-proFunt program.
Money was created to fulfill three things. It has a store of value, a means of calculation and a medium of exchange function. In the digital age, it is hardly surprising that cashless payment functions and electronic money are becoming increasingly attractive.
Together with leading companies from the fields of NFC and RFID technology, we researched possibilities for secure and encrypted communication for contactless payment transactions in 2010 and developed a prototype application.