CS News:
A Truly Smart Approach to Energy Efficiency
The limitations of current “smart” home systems are fairly evident to anyone who has spent time waving self-consciously at a motion detector to turn room lights back on. These systems suffer from having an inadequate number of sensors measuring the wrong things.
Associate Professor Kamin Whitehouse and colleagues in the Engineering School have a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to build novel sensing systems that extract meaningful information about a building’s inhabitants, enabling these systems to deliver services that accurately reflect the occupants’ true needs. Although targeted at heating and cooling systems, their system could equally be used for lighting and other energy-intensive services. “The problem with most smart homes,” says Whitehouse, “is that they’re just not that smart.”
The challenge that Whitehouse has set himself is twofold. He must deploy a robust sensor system, embedded in the home itself, that provides meaningful information about occupancy without intrusive microphones or cameras. And he must create analytics that go beyond establishing moment-to-moment presence to detect underlying patterns in the way occupants interact with their surroundings.
Whitehouse is addressing the first challenge by using ultrasonic and infrared sensors to track occupants’ movements and identify them by height, combined with off-the-shelf electric and water sensors that measure usage. He is tackling the second challenge by developing algorithms that extract the patterns of daily life and using them to judge the significance of real-time activities. For instance, if a person habitually rises early, it might make sense to heat the kitchen if they turn on the faucet at 6 a.m. If they turn on the tap at 3 a.m., it’s likely that they will return to bed after drinking a glass of water.
Currently, Whitehouse has designed and installed instruments for about 20 test homes. He plans to broaden his research agenda to commercial buildings once all of the necessary electrical systems are up and running in Rice Hall, the new 100,000-square-foot building that houses the computer science department. He will be undertaking this project with Trane Inc., which supplied Rice Hall’s heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems (HVAC). “The savings could be significant, based on our findings in residences,” Whitehouse says. “Preliminary results using data from eight homes indicate that our approach can save 28 percent of HVAC energy with only $25 in sensors.”
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