The smart thermostat: using occupancy sensors to save energy in homes
03 Nov 2010-pp 211-224
TL;DR: How to use cheap and simple sensing technology to automatically sense occupancy and sleep patterns in a home, and how to use these patterns to save energy by automatically turning off the home's HVAC system, called the smart thermostat.
Abstract: Heating, ventilation and cooling (HVAC) is the largest source of residential energy consumption. In this paper, we demonstrate how to use cheap and simple sensing technology to automatically sense occupancy and sleep patterns in a home, and how to use these patterns to save energy by automatically turning off the home's HVAC system. We call this approach the smart thermostat. We evaluate this approach by deploying sensors in 8 homes and comparing the expected energy usage of our algorithm against existing approaches. We demonstrate that our approach will achieve a 28% energy saving on average, at a cost of approximately $25 in sensors. In comparison, a commercially-available baseline approach that uses similar sensors saves only 6.8% energy on average, and actually increases energy consumption in 4 of the 8 households.
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TL;DR: A vision for how IoT could change the world in the distant future is presented and eight key research topics are enumerated and research problems within these topics are discussed.
Abstract: Many technical communities are vigorously pursuing research topics that contribute to the Internet of Things (IoT). Nowadays, as sensing, actuation, communication, and control become even more sophisticated and ubiquitous, there is a significant overlap in these communities, sometimes from slightly different perspectives. More cooperation between communities is encouraged. To provide a basis for discussing open research problems in IoT, a vision for how IoT could change the world in the distant future is first presented. Then, eight key research topics are enumerated and research problems within these topics are discussed.
1,700 citations
Cites background from "The smart thermostat: using occupan..."
...Assume that we integrate several systems responsible for energy management (controlling thermostats [17], windows, doors, and shades) and home health care (controlling lights, TVs, body nodesmeasuring heart rate and temperature, and sleep apnea machines [33])....
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...Human in-the-loop systems offer exciting opportunities to a broad range of applications including energymanagement [17], health care [15], and automobile systems [9], [16]....
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TL;DR: This paper presents the key features and the driver technologies of IoT, and identifies the application scenarios and the correspondent potential applications, and focuses on research challenges and open issues to be faced for the IoT realization in the real world.
1,178 citations
Cites background from "The smart thermostat: using occupan..."
...Other types of applications are integrated with the smart grid and optimize the domestic consumption [134]....
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TL;DR: A novel survey of prominent international intelligent buildings research efforts with the theme of energy saving and user activity recognition is provided, determining the most valuable activities and behaviours and their impact on energy saving potential for each of the three main subsystems, i.e., HVAC, light, and plug loads.
658 citations
Patent•
12 Aug 2014TL;DR: In this paper, a ring-shaped user interface component is used to track a rotational input motion of a user, and a processing system is configured to identify a setpoint temperature value based on the tracked input motion, and an electronic display coupled to the processing system.
Abstract: A thermostat for controlling an HVAC system is described, the thermostat having a user interface that is visually pleasing, approachable, and easy to use while also providing ready access to, and intuitive navigation within, a menuing system capable of receiving a variety of different types of user settings and/or control parameters. For some embodiments, the thermostat comprises a housing, a ring-shaped user-interface component configured to track a rotational input motion of a user, a processing system configured to identify a setpoint temperature value based on the tracked rotational input motion, and an electronic display coupled to the processing system. An interactive thermostat menuing system is accessible to the user by an inward pressing of the ring-shaped user interface component. User navigation within the interactive thermostat menuing system is achievable by virtue of respective rotational input motions and inward pressings of the ring-shaped user interface component.
442 citations
17 Sep 2011
TL;DR: In UK homes PreHeat both saved gas and reduced MissTime (the time that the house was occupied but not warm) while removing the need for users to program thermostat schedules.
Abstract: Home heating is a major factor in worldwide energy use. Our system, PreHeat, aims to more efficiently heat homes by using occupancy sensing and occupancy prediction to automatically control home heating. We deployed PreHeat in five homes, three in the US and two in the UK. In UK homes, we controlled heating on a per-room basis to enable further energy savings. We compared PreHeat's prediction algorithm with a static program over an average 61 days per house, alternating days between these conditions, and measuring actual gas consumption and occupancy. In UK homes PreHeat both saved gas and reduced MissTime (the time that the house was occupied but not warm). In US homes, PreHeat decreased MissTime by a factor of 6-12, while consuming a similar amount of gas. In summary, PreHeat enables more efficient heating while removing the need for users to program thermostat schedules.
377 citations
References
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TL;DR: The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
Abstract: The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
22,421 citations
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...To copy otherwise,to republish, topostonserversorto redistributetolists, requirespriorspeci.cpermission and/ora fee....
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TL;DR: The tragedy of the commons as a food basket is averted by private property, or something formally like it as mentioned in this paper, which is why the commons, if justifiable at all, is justifiable only under conditions of low-population density.
Abstract: The tragedy of the commons as a food basket is averted by private property, or something formally like it. The pollution problem is a consequence of population. Analysis of the pollution problem as a function of population density uncovers a not generally recognized principle of morality, namely: the morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed. Those who have more children will produce a larger fraction of the next generation than those with more susceptible consciences. Perhaps the simplest summary of the analysis of man’s population problems is this: the commons, if justifiable at all, is justifiable only under conditions of low-population density. As the human population has increased, the commons has had to be abandoned in one aspect after another. The man who takes money from a bank acts as if the bank were a commons.
7,119 citations
21 Apr 2004
TL;DR: Preliminary results on a small dataset show that it is possible to recognize activities of interest to medical professionals such as toileting, bathing, and grooming with detection accuracies ranging from 25% to 89% depending on the evaluation criteria used.
Abstract: In this work, a system for recognizing activities in the home setting using a set of small and simple state-change sensors is introduced. The sensors are designed to be “tape on and forget” devices that can be quickly and ubiquitously installed in home environments. The proposed sensing system presents an alternative to sensors that are sometimes perceived as invasive, such as cameras and microphones. Unlike prior work, the system has been deployed in multiple residential environments with non-researcher occupants. Preliminary results on a small dataset show that it is possible to recognize activities of interest to medical professionals such as toileting, bathing, and grooming with detection accuracies ranging from 25% to 89% depending on the evaluation criteria used.
1,386 citations
"The smart thermostat: using occupan..." refers background in this paper
...Therefore, the smart thermostat does not require cameras or wearable tags that may be considered intrusive to the user [22, 23] or more sophisticated sensing systems used for fine-grained tracking and activity recognition [24, 25, 26]....
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21 Sep 2008
TL;DR: This paper presents an easy to install sensor network and an accurate but inexpensive annotation method and shows how the hidden Markov model and conditional random fields perform in recognizing activities.
Abstract: A sensor system capable of automatically recognizing activities would allow many potential ubiquitous applications. In this paper, we present an easy to install sensor network and an accurate but inexpensive annotation method. A recorded dataset consisting of 28 days of sensor data and its annotation is described and made available to the community. Through a number of experiments we show how the hidden Markov model and conditional random fields perform in recognizing activities. We achieve a timeslice accuracy of 95.6% and a class accuracy of 79.4%.
873 citations
"The smart thermostat: using occupan..." refers background or methods in this paper
...To illustrate the concept of a deep setback, Figure 8 shows the distributions of leave and return times for the publicly available Kasteren [25] and Tulum [31] home monitoring datasets, excluding weekends....
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...We call these the Kasteren [25] and Tulum [31] datasets, respectively....
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...Therefore, the smart thermostat does not require cameras or wearable tags that may be considered intrusive to the user [22, 23] or more sophisticated sensing systems used for fine-grained tracking and activity recognition [24, 25, 26]....
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...Ground truth in home monitoring experiments is very difficult to collect, and previous studies have used a wide variety of approaches ranging from self reports to video camera recordings to having a proctor physically on site to monitor home activities [32, 25, 33]....
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01 Apr 2000
TL;DR: A system for identifying people based on their footstep force profiles and its accuracy against a large pool of footstep data is tested and it is shown that the effect of footwear is negligible on recognition accuracy.
Abstract: We have created a system for identifying people based on their footstep force profiles and have tested its accuracy against a large pool of footstep data. This floor system may be used to identify users transparently in their everyday living and working environments. We have created user footstep models based on footstep profile features and have been able to achieve a recognition rate of 93%. We have also shown that the effect of footwear is negligible on recognition accuracy.
737 citations
"The smart thermostat: using occupan..." refers background in this paper
...Therefore, the smart thermostat does not require cameras or wearable tags that may be considered intrusive to the user [22, 23] or more sophisticated sensing systems used for fine-grained tracking and activity recognition [24, 25, 26]....
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