Researchers at The University of New Mexico are part of a
team of scholars looking for more efficient ways to heat, cool and ventilate
buildings.
Recently, the Advanced
Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) announced $20 million in funding for 15 projects that
will develop a new class of sensor systems to enable significant energy savings
via reduced demand for heating and cooling in residential and commercial
buildings. Researchers from the University of New Mexico, along with the Center
for Lighting Enabled Systems & Applications (LESA) at Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, are working to create a low cost, privacy preserving
sensor technology for counting, locating and tracking occupants in any
commercial space. Funding for the entire project, including development and
testing, is $2,375 million over three years.
Currently, about 13 percent of all energy produced in the
United States is used to heat, cool and ventilate buildings, according to
ARPA-E. Heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) is the largest
consumer of energy in commercial buildings, totaling 37 percent of all energy
used in this sector. Much of this energy is wasted by heating, cooling and
over-ventilating unoccupied or partially occupied spaces. Due to a lack of
accurate and reliable occupancy information, existing building automation and
control systems are limited in their ability to substantially reduce HVAC
energy use.
ARPA-E’s Saving Energy Nationwide in Structures with
Occupancy Recognition (SENSOR) program supports innovative and highly accurate
presence sensors and occupant counters that optimize heating, cooling, and
ventilation (HVAC) of buildings while reducing cost and slashing energy
use.
“The award from ARPA-E allows LESA to build on its
fundamental research showing the power of digitized light, which, when
reflected from any object in the space, generates privacy preserving occupancy
and activity data,” said Robert F. Karlicek Jr., LESA director, who also serves
as a professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems
Engineering at Rensselaer. “In this program, the LESA team will apply its lighting
toolkit concepts to achieving better energy efficiency in buildings, but this
is only the start of how digitized illumination will become an essential part
of any Internet of Things (IoT) platform for smart buildings, healthcare,
horticulture, new 5G wireless communications and cognitive environments. We are
honored to work with our partners from The University of New Mexico and ABB to
take our game-changing energy technology research to the next level.”
According to the Karlicek, the sensor significantly extends
infrared (IR) based time of flight (TOF) distance measurement technology
previously developed by LESA. The new TOF sensor system will use a patented
plenoptic (a light field that captures information about the light field
emanating from a scene)
detector technology developed by LESA academic partner, The
University of New Mexico, and will integrate additional sensor signal
processing circuitry developed by the LESA optoelectronic Illumination and
Communication (IC) team at Rensselaer.
“The miniature, low cost TOF sensor array can then be built
into lighting fixtures or installed in the ceiling,” Karelicek said. “In
addition, several sensors distributed throughout the space will form a sparse
network, scanning the entire space for distance information to map the precise
number, location and movement of occupants. It cannot identify people, thus
preserving personal privacy.”
The University of
New Mexico will work on the development of a sensor array that
provides multiple spatially separated time of flight signals using a unique
integrated optical technology developed at UNM, which was recently awarded U.S.
Patent 9,766,123 through STC.UNM.
The UNM technology uses a grating coupled waveguide as a spectral and angular
filter. The input coupling region is displaced from the silicon detection
region to provide a unique plenoptic sensor that provides unparalleled spectral
and angular resolution while being fully compatible with mature silicon
integrated circuit manufacturing technology to ensure low cost.
“It is exciting to see the ideas of digital light that LESA
pioneered as aspirational targets become real products that will have a
significant societal impact; this is very much a goal of the NSF ERCs, to drive
multidisciplinary projects that go from fundamental science to practical
application,” said Steven R.J. Brueck, Ph.D., UNM
Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UNM
lead for LESA, and emeritus director of the Center for
High Technology Materials.
According to the researchers, the data from the sensor
network uses the motion and position information to maintain an extremely
accurate count of the number of people in the space, and uses a specialized
algorithm to track people who may be temporarily lost when moving between sensors,
thus reducing the number of sensors needed. The new ToF image processing
algorithms will extend the current ToF sensing technology developed previously
by LESA’s image processing and controls group at Rensselaer in order to take
advantage of the new capabilities of the plenoptic ToF IC that will be
developed by the combined Rensselaer and UNM teams.
Occupancy data is then sent to the building control system to
manage heating, cooling, and air conditioning (HVAC) energy consumption in
order to maximize building efficiency, according to LESA industry member ABB.
The goal is to provide optimal human comfort at reasonable cost. ABB, through
its U.S. Corporate Research organization in Raleigh, North Carolina, will work
closely with the Rensselaer team to validate sensor performance via EnergyPlus
modeling and hardware-in-the-loop tests to document energy savings for several
types of office settings. The ABB team will also support commercialization
efforts, a key deliverable of the DOE’s ARPA-e SENSOR program.
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