The Intelligently Designed Engineering for Advanced Living (IDEAL) House is a large multi-disciplinary endeavour being launched by the School of EE&CE to provide students (and staff) with the opportunity to contribute to the future of human habitation on this planet. While this initiative can be broadly divided into the two major areas of sustainability and automation, it is meant to be inclusive of all aspects where electrical, electronic, and/or computing technologies can contribute to human well-being within a habitat. There could be many aspects to this type of house, including energy production, energy efficiency, automated control of appliances, leisure and entertainment, comfort and safety, as well as providing the basic needs of food, water and shelter in clever and sustainable ways. It is intended that the IDEAL House will expand to include any applicable technology desired by the participants in the project.

This "futuristic" human residence is intended to showcase and advance the state-of-the-art in electrical/electronic/computing technologies, including (but not limited to):

• The use of some combination of solar, wind, biomass, fuelcell, human power, and/or any other sustainable energy sources as primary energy sources, together with energy storage and power conversion to meet all the household energy needs.
• Sensing temperature, light, humidity, (etc) and controlling passive or active heating, cooling, shading or air movement mechanisms so as to maintain the comfort level of the house.
• Containing and enhancing all aspects of household operations: appliance use and monitoring, audio-visual entertainment, communications and interactive gaming by intelligent control.
• The use of smart sensors, activators and detectors for enhanced security (central locking of doors and windows, night-time security, multimodal user verification, etc.) and automatic activation (switching lights on when a user enters a room, day/night activation, air-conditioning etc.)
• Automated assistance through robotic devices (mobile and fixed) and handsfree control (using sound and visual cues)
• The provision of refuelling (through battery charging or hydrogen production using the sustainable energy sources) for electric-drive vehicles.
• The use of energy efficient, sustainable systems (eg solid state lighting).