As lockdown requirements for COVID-19 ease, it is changing the way indoor spaces are used. This is posing challenge for individuals who manage indoor spaces, from offices to homes and factories.
Of all, heating, ventilation, and cooling (HVAC) systems, one of the largest consumers of energy in American homes and commercial buildings are facing significant challenges. To mitigate the challenges to manage HVAC system, it requires a smarter, more flexible climate control. The one that can keep us comfortable without the need to heat and cool entire empty buildings.
To provide a solution to this, a group of researchers have developed an efficient solution that completely does away with wall-mounted thermostats.
Newly developed System prove for comfort in indoor Environments
Termed Human Embodied Autonomous Thermostat (HEAT) – the system combines thermal cameras with 3-D video cameras. This is to measure if occupants are hot or cold by tracking their facial temperature. Thereafter, the system feeds the temperature data of occupants to a predictive model, wherein the information about occupants’ thermal preferences is compared.
Finally, the system zeros on a temperature that will be comfortable for maximum number of occupants with minimum energy expenditure. Drawing inference from the new study, it suggests the system can effectively and efficientlyset a temperature for comfort of 10 occupants in a laboratory setting.
Meanwhile, COVID 19 poses a number of new climate control challenges. This arise as occupancy in buildings is less consistent, and people struggle to becomfortable with masks and other protective gear.
For this, HEAT could provide an easy way to maximize comfort using less energy. Here, the significant innovation is to be able to measure comfort without the need for users to wear and detection devices, and without a separate camera for every occupant.
And, HEAT behaves somewhat like today’s internet-drivenlearning thermostats
