Robots and Thermostats
October 25, 2013, Robo Business, Santa Clara, CA—Yoky Matsuoka from Nest talked about the evolution of technologies that lead to greater automation. The thermostat is one example of this trend of humans, devices, and how they work together.
The differences between robots and thermostats are not that great. As more technology gets integrated into the home, the concept of the house as a robot seems likely. A broad definition of a robot is a machine with sensors and actuators that operate some repetitive function.
One driver for increasing home automation is energy use. Utility bills with constant inflation may be as high as $47k per year by 2032. one of the low laying fruit is heating, which accounts for 44 percent of the bill. A smarter thermostat could save energy, but the first generation of programmable thermostats didn’t save energy because they are too hard to program.
Nest developed a more intelligent thermostat that integrates AI and additional sensors for humidity, motion sensing, etc. to the basic temperature sensor. The embedded intelligence can learn normal schedules and set the temperature based on use. The motion sensors enable an automatic away turn-off function that lets the house approach local ambient until it is occupied again.
A savings icon, a green leaf, indicates that the use profile is optimized for minimal energy use, through such features as running the fan only, heat pump early on balance to change the temperature in small increments over the day. Pre-cooling or pre-heating the house and running intermittent cycles during the day allows the overall energy use to be reduced, since the temperature doesn’t go too far from the comfort range. The thermostat is connected and data are collected and aggregated to show your use compared to the historical information and against all other users.
The thermostat also helps the utilities by reducing peak demand through staggered startup. The utility can tell the smart thermostats the open windows for startup so peak load is managed better. The units accept a one-way directive from the utility to set start times, which no one notices. As a result, some utilities are making the incentives and rebates easier to access. Instead of a set of papers, the rebates are enabled through a website.
The increased information from the smart thermostat encourages behavioral changes and easily adapts to seasonal changes. The data is available to the consumer and to the utilities. The connected aspect of the devices allows remote schedule changes to further reduce energy use. For example, when you go out to dinner, the heat pump doesn’t start at the normal time, but waits until the house sees activity.
Another way to save energy is to make small changes in the settings over time. The temperature can be changed by 0.1° per day to reduce energy use. The inhabitants will easily accommodate to the changes due to the small increments. The user still has control of the temperature and can reject the offered saving profiles.
After environmental controls, the house needs smoke and CO2 detectors. One major area of dissatisfaction is that the devices go off when there is no problem, like when you burn the bacon, and when the batteries need changing, you can’t find the detector that is beeping.
By adding location capabilities, wireless communications, time, gesture recognition, and announcements to the basic set of detectors, the detector overcomes these problems. The gesture recognition allows you to wave at the detector to silence it when the smoke is from a known source. Adding intelligence allows the detector to announce an impending alert by hazard type and location, “there is smoke in the kitchen” at a level that is below any safety limits.
The communications and mesh networking for the detectors allows remote checks and notification of out of bounds readings for hazards and batteries. The motion sensor and associated lights allows the detector to act as a short-term hall light. In addition, the detectors can talk to the thermostat to turn off the furnace if a CO2 alert occurs, since most of these alerts are related to faulty furnace operations.
Adding intelligence to sensors allows the smart house to control the environmental systems and provide safety alerts to the occupants. These additional components transform the building into a fixed location robot.
