User Behavior Prediction in the “Offline” Smart
Home Solutions
Valery Milykh Dmitry Vavilov
CTO Project Manager
Quarta Technologies T-Systems Billetkontoret A/S IT Dept.
Moscow, Russia St-Petersburg, Russia
v.milykh@quarta.ru Dmitry.Vavilov@yahoo.com ivan.platonov@ticket2travel.ru
Abstract—Smart Home products spread is restrained due to
several reasons including poor usability and fears of the personal
data security [1,2].
Our research team suggested Smart Home solutions based on
the user behavior analysis and modeling [3]. We also studied
application of this approach to different householder needs (like
healthcare or imitation of the user’s presence [4]). We showed
that the approach also critically improve the usability of the
Smart Home. Finally, we described the methodology for analysis
of the householder’s behavior and simulation of his activities.
So “offline” solutions based on this approach allows protecting
privacy and provide good usability (“offline” means here partly
or completely disconnected from the external operating signals
and observations). At the same time they have some
disadvantages including relatively low quality of predictions [5].
In this paper we discuss how the tuning of parameters of the
previously suggested methodology provides improvement of the
user needs predictions. The results of primal tests of this
approach are presented and analyzed.
Index Terms— Internet of Things, Smart Home, user behavior
analysis and simulation, personal data security, recommender
system.
I. INTRODUCTION
At least dozen of the productized Smart Home solutions
were presented in frames of IFA 2015 Exhibition in Berlin last
September. They are already available for consumers in the
USA and EU countries. However, several significant obstacles
slow down their promotion, and fear of the personal data
security remains one of the most important. According to
research [1], “consumers are more worried about privacy and
security issues than any other potential downsides of the
Internet of Things, with 53 percent expressing concern that
their data might be shared without their knowledge or
approval, and 51 percent expressing concern that their data
could be hacked by other users”.
For example, widespread deployment of smart devices
connected to some centralized data storage has broadened the
scope of people who have access to logs of activities of
thousands and even millions of users. As Smart Grid analytics
978-1-5090-2957-0/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
Ivan Platonov Alexander Anisimov
Developer Developer
State University
St-Petersburg, Russia St-Petersburg, Russia
alexander.m.anisimov@gmail.com
report, “a utility in a major metropolitan area installed uni-
directional smart meters that simply watched power usage on
a "real time" basis. The CEO of the utility said that even
though they weren't looking for personal information, it
quickly became apparent that the utility could tell when
people woke up, went to work, showered, cooked breakfast or
dinner, and when they were on vacation.” [2]
So the user can require that managerial inputs, schedule of
turning on/off the appliances, and information from sensors
should not be visible for external observers.
Another barrier is the number of Smart Home components
noticeably increased each year. Manual management of
appropriate parameters becomes time and effort consuming
process. It requires discipline from users. In reality, an
ordinary user leaves off such routine activities very soon.
Finally the major part of the functionality is not exploited.
Poor usability of solutions has become one more considerable
obstacle for progress of Smart Home expansion.
Our research team suggests the methodology that helps to
resolve all mentioned issues. In our previous research papers
[3] we described the reference model for the software
responsible for analysis of Smart Home user behavior and
simulation of the user’s activities in automatic mode.
Input data for this model should be gathered from all
available sources (info from sensors or explicit user’s
directions), and the results of analysis will be analyzed for all
possible goals (including but not limited by security and
healthcare topics, energy consumption optimization, and so
on). The software will provide recommendations without any
interaction with external resources so both personal data on the
user’s activities as well as recommendations themselves will
not leave the Smart Home perimeter.
At the same time such “offline” or “disconnected” Smart
Home has some disadvantages. For example, quality of
prediction of user needs by separate recommender system is
deliberately below in comparison with collaborative ones [5].
We considered earlier how to improve the quality of the
householder’s activities forecast by taking into account the
following assumptions:
1) Cyclicality of the Smart Home related user activities (at
least daily and weekly cycles);
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 2) The forgetting factor in probabilistic calculations
(probability of the similar user’s actions is higher if the time
interval in days between them is less).
3) Duration and time of the start of the user’s activity as
quantitative and qualitative estimation of his/her needs and
preferences.
Below the results of primal tests of the approach are
discussed. We studied how to optimize different parameters of
the suggested model. For example, what kind of dependencies
should be used for calculations corresponding to the second
and third assumptions (see [3] for details).
Another important parameter of the used algorithm we
discuss below is the size of “rolling window” of data (usually
measured in days). Every time when the predicted Smart
Home equipment action is re-calculated, the oldest data is
removed from consideration, while the most recent data is
added. Different “rolling window” size is recommended for
various goals. In General Electric (GE) research [6] 45 days
are recommended for algorithm for automatic detection of
abnormally long periods of inactivity at home (a suitable
rolling window must be short enough to adapt to changes in
resident behaviour, but long enough to avoid an undue level of
false alerts). At the same time, for many Smart Home
appliances 10 or even 10 days enough to create the schedule
of the predicted user’s activities.
Finally we explore how often we should gather data from
the sensors to provide a reliable forecast. The sensors should
not react on minor motions because the log should not contain
“white noise” data). However time intervals between two
successive records in the log shall not be huge enough (the
Smart Home shall simulate the user’s activities relatively
flexible and quick). For example, if air conditioner will
automatically change the modes with one hour step, it may
lead to permanent manual corrections and form bad consumer
feeling.
II. TASK AND TEST DATA DESCRIPTION
We consider user behaviour prediction regarding the
following “general” Smart Home task: proactive setup of the
comfort climate in the room before the householder arrives.
Our test stand was setup in the office, so our task is more
specific: proactive setup of the comfort climate in the open
space before the first employee arrives to the office.
The personnel does not have strict schedule for visiting the
office during the working days. The sensors track the people
moving inside the open space (but do not react on minor
motions, so the log does not contain “white noise” data).
The log is gathered during one month. It is necessary to
predict the time when the first employee comes to the office
next working day (so the air conditioner might be turned on
before it, and the necessary climate is arranged till the first
person comes in). We simplify the task as much as possible
(for example, we do not consider different air conditioning
modes that can be setup by different persons in different days;
we suppose that only one mode is used).
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The log structure is very simple, every record includes date,
time (hours, minutes, and seconds), and the motion indicator
(0 or 1, “zero” records state lack of motion).
It is clear that this specific ‘Smart office” task completely
agrees with “general” Smart Home task. The input data
insignificantly differs in these cases (for example, for Smart
Office we have data only for working days; and these
observations usually complement the Smart Home signals in
terms of time frames). However the data structure and the
algorithms for their processing are completely applicable for
“general” Smart Home tasks, and only specific clustering
should be preliminary used.
III. TEST DATA CLUSTERING
The preliminary analysis shows that only “no motion”
records are gathered for non-working days and the night time.
To exclude artificial improvement of the algorithm [3] usage,
we consider only records for working days since 6 AM till 8
PM. So data clustering takes place.
Weekly cyclicality of the users’ activities should improve
the prediction for appropriate days of week (for example, we
can expect that log of Thursday actions provides more reliable
prediction for next Thursday). However due to fact that some
non-working days were Monday and Tuesday (Russian
national holidays), they were excluded from the clustered data,
and weekly cyclicality of the users activities is broken. At the
same time, it is a relatively common failure of the working
days schedule, and it is necessary to have relatively long log
of data to disregard such data interruption. In our case the
weekly cyclicality is neglected because of short log of data.
IV. TEST RESULTS ANALYSIS
The prediction algorithm is described in details in [3]. We
divide the considered time frame (6 AM – 8 PM) on intervals
in N minutes. For every interval of the specific day we assign
the motion indicator equal to 1 for the whole interval if motion
is indicated at least once during this period of time. In other
case motion indicator remains equal to 0). So we get values of
the motion indicator for each interval for every day in our log
(they are mentioned below as “actual”).
We take the first K days of the log (here K is the size in
days of the “rolling window” of data). For each interval we
calculate the predicted value of the motion indicator for K+1
day (based on steps defined in [3]) – and compare it with its
“actual” value.
Then we repeat this procedure for prediction of the motion
indicator’s values for K+2 day (based on data for K days since
the second day in the log) and again compare the predicted
and actual values. We reiterate the process as long as the size
of log allows it.
Finally we calculate the percentage of coincidences for all
days and all intervals for the specific set of parameters used in
these calculations: size of time interval (N minutes), “rolling
window” size (K days), and the type function used in the
forgetting factor calculation (linear, quadratic, or cubic; it
defines how significant will be impact of the most recent
data). The results are presented on the diagrams below.

Fug. 1 Prediction results for the linear forgetting factor dependency
Fug.2 Prediction results for the quadratic forgetting factor dependency
Fig.3 Prediction results for the cubic forgetting factor dependency
We can make several conclusions regarding influence of
each of the mentioned above parameters. First of all, increase
of the time interval’s size leads to the prediction improvement.
If only this parameter is changed, the quality of prediction is
changed from 50 % (for 5 minutes intervals) to 80-85% (for
one hour interval). It is expected result, because rough forecast
has more chances to be successful. At the same time, both
admissible minimal size of the time intervals and satisfactory
percentage of the successful predictions critically depend from
the considered task. In our case 30 minutes time interval and
75% (or more) successful predictions can be found as
acceptable result (it means that approximately once per week
the user will change the air conditioner mode manually). At the
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same time, it could not be found reasonable for the healthcare
tasks like detecting of abnormally long periods of inactivity
(due to frequent fault alerts).
Secondly, increase of the “rolling window” size does not
definitely improve the prediction, 5 days can be considered as
its optimal meaning. It can be easily explained by the
forgetting factor usage, however another optimum (8-9 days) is
also observed for each type of the forgetting factor
dependency. For the household appliances 5 days seems more
preferable because it means that the consumer can stop regular
manual setup during the second week of the usage.
Finally, the type of dependency used for calculation of the
forgetting factor does not significantly affect the prediction.
We can suggest that correlation of the householder’s needs for
two or three successive days is very strong.
V. CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER STEPS
In our previous publications we considered opportunity to
apply the similar methodology of the user’s activities
prediction and simulation for different areas of Smart Home
functionality. Such implementation of Smart Home will use all
available input data (signals gathered from all available sensors
and explicit user’s directions) and similar algorithms for all
necessary Smart Home tasks. This Smart Home solution (partly
or completely disconnected from external environment) would
allow resolving different issues including personal data
security and usability improvement.
The results of primal tests of this approach presented and
analyzed in this paper show that it can provide acceptable
results for relatively uncritical features like comfort control. At
the same time, it could not be found reasonable for the
healthcare tasks like detecting of abnormally long periods of
inactivity (due to frequent fault alerts, etc.) So the suggested
relatively simple approach should be complemented with more
advanced algorithms. In other words, the all-purpose Smart
Home solution based on unified data should include the set of
algorithms for critical and non-critical functionality. In further
researches we will discuss how to combine these algorithms.
VI. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of
Dr. Mikhail Makarov (CEO, EVMTech, Zurich, Switzerland)
and Alexey Melezhik (Lead Specialist, Gazprom Promgaz).
REFERENCES
[1] The Internet of Things, Afinnova Research report, 2014
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http://smartgrid.ieee.org/questions-and-answers/551-interview-
with-samuel-sciacca, 2014
[3] Dmitry Vavilov, Alexey Melezhik, Ivan Platonov, “Reference
Model for Smart Home User Behavior Analysis Software
Module”, ICCE-Berlin 2014, Sep. 7-10
[4] Dmitry Vavilov, Alexey Melezhik, Ivan Platonov, “Imitation of
Smart Home User’s Presence”, SHUR 2015, Malaga, Spain,
June 22-25
[5] Alexander Felfernig, Michael Jeran, Gerald Ninaus, Florian
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