Technology Overview

After HVAC, lighting is the most dominant component of energy consumption in workspaces and commercial buildings. This technology offer presents an occupancy aware smart lighting system that supports dramatic reduction of such lighting energy consumption by (a) non-intrusively identifying the specific areas within a floor that are occupied by humans, (b) estimating the current luminance levels in different areas within the floor and (c) automatically adjusting the intensity levels of controllable LED lights. Using the available CCTV surveillance cameras in the environment (buildings), the system takes camera images as input, and applies AI technologies to detect occupant locations and the current level of lighting at 2-3 meter granularity. Utilizing these inputs, the solution then optimally and continually adjusts the intensity level of different LED luminaires, via standard BMS (Building Management System) interfaces, to minimize energy overheads while assuring occupant comfort.

Technology Features, Specifications and Advantages

The smartlight system does not require specific equipment, but uses existing CCTV surveillance feeds, together with AI-based technologies, to continually adapt the lighting levels of multiple luminaires collectively.

Features :

• Real-time estimation of luminance intensity and daylight levels in a given area, without requiring instrumentation of additional sensors.
• Real-time, fine-grained (2-3 meter error-i.e., at table-level granularity)) sensing of human occupancy.
• Automated and joint intensity tuning of multiple LED lights to maximize energy savings without sacrificing user comfort.
• Lower lighting energy consumption (Approx. 63.5% in low occupancy and 37% in high occupancy in a practically deployed coworking space of SMU) of workspaces/buildings, compared to alternatives based on use of motion sensors OR time schedules.
• As mentioned before, there is no extra cost involved in purchase of new equipment and the technology can use the surveillance cameras available in any public space.
• The system extracts the information of occupants and luminance intensity from the CCTV camera images and discards the same. It does not store any information relative to the occupants and the artefacts carried by the occupants. Hence, there is no compromise in the privacy of the occupants.

Potential Applications

Urban Solutions and Smart Buildings

• Very useful in coworking spaces which exhibit unpredictable and time-varying occupancy level.
• Any smart building and commercial spaces (e.g., restaurants, libraries) that wants to conserve energy by utilizing smart lighting system based on controllable LED lights.
• Can be deployed in open public spaces which has surveillance cameras and controllable LED lights.

Customer Benefit

Promotes sustainable operations of built environments and indoor spaces, by applying AI techniques on camera-captured images with no additional infrastructure investment cost:

• Reduce energy-consumption in buildings and coworking spaces.
• Provide fine-grained (table-level) human occupancy tracking for indoor spaces.
• No separate mobile App or equipment required to be deployed. The smart lighting system can work with the CCTV surveillance camera images.