Development and verification of a smart remote control system for home appliances

•The proposed approach guides a system developer to successfully build a remote controller.•It has solved the inconvenience problems in users’ daily life.•It enables users to control different home appliances through a recording function in the single App on a smartphone.•It provides a safe environment for the disabled people. People usually adopt a specific remote controller to monitor each home appliance, which is really inconvenient. In order to integrate different remote control functions into one software Application (App) on the smartphone, a smart remote control system is developed using the following two steps. The first step is to transform the designed operational flowchart of a smart remote control system into the Petri net model. It can avoid the potential hazards or vulnerabilities remained in the logically incorrect systems. Furthermore, through the deadlock verification, a deadlock can be prevented from the system design. The second step is to control home appliances remotely by using a smartphone with Bluetooth or WiFi network and sending commands to the infrared (IR) equipment. Finally, the experimental results have indicated that our daily life will become more convenient and safer when using a smartphone to control the home appliances remotely. [Display omitted]