2026-02-18
18 分钟For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Kendra Peer Lewis in for Rachel Feldman.
Your home is a death trap.
It is a place where if you're not careful, your furniture can topple and crush you.
You can burn yourself on the stove, choke on a meal, flip in the shower, or drown in the bathtub.
And for people with Alzheimer's or dementia,
the risk of experiencing serious accidents at home goes up.
What happens, for example, if someone puts food on the stove to cook and forgets to turn it off?
But what if homes were smarter, less deadly?
Increasingly,
researchers are looking at how AI may be able to improve homes for people with Alzheimer's and dementia
while also reducing the strain on caregivers.
Multimedia journalist Megan McDonough is here with more.
Then Cooper has won a computerized smart house for his family.
This is the trailer for Smart House, a 1999 Disney Channel original movie.
It was directed by LeVar Burton of Reading Rainbow fame.
It introduced scores of millennials like me to the concept of a science fiction computerized house.
Complete with video valve projections, a state-of-the-art control room,
floor absorbers, and maternal instants.
Fire rhythm analysis indicates this is exactly the outfit you would have selected yourself.
More than a quarter century later,