Smart Sensing for HVAC Control: Collaborative Intelligence in Optical and IR Cameras

Energy management of heating, ventilation, and cooling (HVAC) has become a primary concern for residential and commercial buildings. In order to save energy without compromising the comfort of occupants, various techniques have been explored to sense the real-time occupancy/vacancy of HVAC zones. Among all these approaches, wireless-camera-based sensing stands out for its potential application in surveillance and security in addition to energy management. However, limited lifetime and detection accuracy have prevented pervasiveness of wireless-camera-based occupancy detection. This paper presents a novel wireless device platform and prototype development that incorporates an infrared (IR) camera with an optical (OP) camera to provide collaborative intelligence at low power and enhanced accuracy. Compared to the single sensor baseline design, the proposed fusion-based OP/IR design demonstrates 5x miss rate improvement, 5x reduction in false positive rate, and 3 x lifetime extension for battery usage with respect to a single-sensor-based design. Compared to a programmed thermostat and schedule based HVAC control, the design saves a maximum of 26% of HVAC energy.