Your home

You want to automate and manage your lights, thermostat, security and doors, appliances, and audio and video. You want these devices to communicate with one another. And you want control from your computer, smartphone or tablet.

In place of your alarm clock, you can imagine your bedroom drapes opening and music filling your room when it’s time to wake up. As you leave for work, the lights and radio shut off and temperature in the house drops. You can open your door remotely for your children. The possibilities go on – and how you automate your home is up to you.

By 2016, you might well be one of the 10 million homeowners worldwide, up from 513,000 in 2010, who market intelligence company ABI Research forecasts will have a home automation service provided by a home security company.

Your car

You’ve seen footage of Google’s driverless cars, which have travelled more than 225,000 kilometres, using cameras, radar sensors, a laser range finder and maps to navigate.

And then there are the self-driving concept cars, most recently Toyota’s Fun Vii and Nissan’s Pivo 3, which were on display in early December at the Tokyo Motor Show.

While you’re eager for a driverless car to show up at a dealership near you, there’s no word on when that might happen. (Besides, the only place to expressly sanction driverless cars is the state of Nevada.)

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t options for making your ride more autonomous – and you’re ready to consider them. Like the Volvo XC60, which will automatically brake to avoid a collision in slow moving city traffic. Or Ford’s Active Park Assist, which will allow your vehicle to parallel park itself (with little input from you).

After all, the companies behind these technologies want to help reduce traffic accident fatalities – and that’s a mission you can get behind.

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Thanks to everyone who took the poll. Your answers will appear in the spring 2012 issue of techlife magazine.