Domestic technology is the incorporation of applied science 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 ...

s, home automation and other devices commonly used in the home, such as clothes dryers 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 An autonomous building is a building designed to be operated independently from infrastructural support services such as the electric power grid, gas grid, municipal water systems, sewage treatment systems, storm drains, communication service ...

. 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. I ...

Mop A mop (such as a floor mop) is a mass or bundle of coarse strings or yarn, etc., or a piece of cloth, sponge or other absorbent material, attached to a pole or stick. It is used to soak up liquid, for cleaning floors and other surfaces, to 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 t ...

* Shower * 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, ty ...

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 *

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 accelerat ...

Electric lighting

Fluorescent light bulb A fluorescent lamp, or fluorescent tube, is a low-pressure mercury-vapor gas-discharge lamp that uses fluorescence to produce visible light. An electric current in the gas excites mercury vapor, which produces short-wave ultraviolet ligh ...

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 oxid ...

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 *

Bread maker A bread making machine or breadmaker is a home appliance for baking bread. It consists of a bread pan (or "tin"), at the bottom of which are one or more built-in paddles, mounted in the center of a small special-purpose oven. This small oven is ...

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 #Nomenclature, 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 of Nations, Commonwealth ...

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 *

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 * Refrigerator

Home maintenance

Groundskeeping equipment Groundskeeping is the activity of tending an area of land for aesthetic or functional purposes, typically in an institutional setting. It includes mowing grass, trimming hedges, pulling weeds, planting flowers, etc. The U.S. Department of Labor e ...

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 tool ...

s * Paint sprayer

Air conditioning

* Air conditioner * Central heating unit * Fan

Computer systems

* Data storage device * 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 * Plumbing * Home router

Power generation

* Solar panels *

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 yea ...

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 *

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 are ...

. 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 wav ...

), 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 ...

s * Smart locks *

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 restricted ...

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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