Seat-Driven Smart Room Automation for Device-Aware Hybrid Communications Environments

Abstract

This paper presents a seat-driven automation layer for the Laboratory of Hybrid Communication (LHC), a room-centric hybrid meeting platform that maps virtual seats to physical display nodes. Unlike conventional videoconferencing layouts, the system synchronizes digital participant presence with room infrastructure by turning displays on when a remote participant occupies a seat and off after leave or timeout. The architecture separates automation from media transport and uses short-lived seat presence state, an internal REST interface, and a SmartThings-controlled display layer. We evaluate join-to-display-on latency, leave/timeout-to-display-off latency, switching errors, recovery under stale heartbeat/API conditions, and energy impact. Measurements from a 7-day deployment show zero false-positive switching events, one false-negative ON event, weighted mean ON/OFF latencies of 3.30 s and 4.12 s, and an estimated 95.03% reduction in display energy consumption against an automation-free always-on reference. Extrapolated savings correspond to approximately 197.87 kWh per month and 2372.60 kWh per year.