LAS VEGAS -- Imagine a world in which the garage door opens automatically as a car pulls into the driveway. The living room lights and heater turn on.
In the so-called smart home, cars, appliances and other devices all have sensors and Internet connectivity to think and act for themselves, making life easier.
The smart-home concept is known in tech circles as the Internet of Things.
Current iterations primarily include the ability to control gadgets such as lights and security alarms or view data remotely through a smartphone app. At the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, manufacturers promoted more devices and functionality. Some gadgets are able to talk directly with one another, not just to an app.
That garage door? Mercedes-Benz would like people to imagine their luxury car of the future pulling in all by itself, without a driver behind the wheel, to bring its passengers home.
A week ago, the carmaker unveiled a sleek concept car that it is calling F 015 when it turned a stage inside The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas into a scene usually reserved for annual car shows, attracting a swell of people on stage afterward wanting a closer look.
The car's futuristic look belies some historic inspiration in its design. Dieter Zetsche, head of Mercedes-Benz, said the wheels were pushed to the outer edges much like a horse carriage, giving ample room inside for seating rather than wheel wells -- in this case four modern swivel chairs that can face one another.
And much like those horse carriages, passengers inside the car of the future would be able to chat, read a newspaper or even take a nap while their car would ferry them home.
"Mankind has been dreaming of autonomous cars since the 1950s," Zetsche said. He said his company has been working to make it a reality, albeit still a concept and not yet in production, since the 1990s.
The Internet of Things could mean big business for gadget-makers, too.
The Consumer Electronics Association projects that sales of smart energy and security systems alone will total $574 million this year, a 23 percent increase from 2014. Although that pales by comparison to the $18 billion spent on TVs and displays, growth has been swift. In terms of people smartening up their homes in earnest, it probably will be another two years before devices are cheap and widespread enough for the typical consumer, said Eduardo Pinheiro, chief executive of Muzzley, which makes a hub that allows devices to talk to each other.
For now, the smart home is more about possibilities than practice. Many companies that exhibited at the electronics show are laying the foundation for what a smart-home system will eventually do, hoping to entice consumers to start thinking about upgrading to smart gadgets. It's not always an easy sell.
Consider wearable devices that track fitness and other activities. In many cases, the novelty wears off quickly, and devices end up in drawers. But what if a wearable device that tracks sleep could tell the coffee maker to start brewing as someone woke up? When the coffee was done, what if the sprinklers on the front lawn automatically turned off so no one got wet walking out the front door to work?
"It's these great benefits that we need to explain," said BK Yoon, Samsung's CEO and chief of consumer electronics. "We can't just talk about the Internet of Things because it's so impersonal, like a bedtime story for robots. We have to show what's in it for them."
These are the building blocks for an eventual automated home. Once those building blocks are in place, services can better predict what users want. For example, Netflix is already good about recommending movies based on viewers' preferences, but it might suggest something different if it could read data from a wearable device or camera and tell that a person was with friends or stressed out, said Shawn Dubravac, senior director of research with the Consumer Electronics Association.
Some examples: Lucis Technologies will soon ship a smart-lighting device called NuBryte that can learn behavior, such as what time a person tends to come home.
Sensors can turn on a night light if someone wakes up to use the bathroom but switch on brighter lights during the day. A coffee maker from Smarter will soon use data from fitness trackers such as Fitbit. After a bad night of sleep, the coffee maker will know to make the java stronger that morning.
Other products focus on better notifications: a battery for a smoke detector to alert a phone when the alarm goes off, or a bracelet that vibrates when the baby cries in its crib.
"It's got to be something people are seeing it can do and want it to do," said Chris Penrose, AT&T's senior vice president for the Internet of Things. "It's got to make their lives better and be incredibly easy to use."
At the electronics show, Whirlpool showcased dryers that can run a slower, energy-saving cycle if people aren't home and thus aren't in a rush. The dryer integrates with Google Inc.'s Nest smart thermostat, which has sensors to figure out that no one's home and lower the heat automatically. Meanwhile, a smart-home hub called DigitalStrom plans to take cues from Nest. If Nest is trying to cool down the house, for instance, DigitalStrom will lower automated window shades to block out sunlight.
"True consumer value will come when devices work in concert with one another and, in many cases, across manufacturers," said Brett Dibkey, a Whirlpool Corp. vice president. "The home adapts to the way consumers live rather than the other way around."
Information for this report was contributed by Kimberly Pierceall of the Associated Press.
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