Intelligent homes consist of ubiquitous sensors, home networks, and a context-aware computing system. These homes are expected to offer many services such as intelligent air-conditioning, lighting control, health monitoring, and home security. In order to realize these services, many researchers have worked on various research topics including smart sensors with low power consumption, home network protocols, resident and location detection, context-awareness, and scenario and service control. This paper presents the real-time metabolic rate estimation method that is based on measured heart rate for human adaptive appliance (air-conditioner, lighting etc.). This estimation results can provide valuable information to control smart appliances so that they can adjust themselves according to the status of residents. The heart rate based method has been experimentally compared with the location-based method on a test bed.