Recognition of Occupants' Cold Discomfort-Related Actions for Energy-Efficient Buildings

HVAC systems play a critical role in reducing energy consumption in buildings. Integrating occupants' thermal comfort evaluation into HVAC control strategies is believed to reduce building energy consumption while minimizing their thermal discomfort. Advanced technologies, such as visual sensors and deep learning, enable the recognition of occupants' discomfort-related actions, thus making it possible to estimate their thermal discomfort. Unfortunately, it remains unclear how accurate a deep learning-based classifier is to recognize occupants' discomfort-related actions in a working environment. Therefore, this research evaluates the classification performance of occupants' discomfort-related actions while sitting at a computer desk. To achieve this objective, this study collected RGB video data on nine college students' cold discomfort-related actions and then trained a deep learning-based classifier using the collected data. The classification results are threefold. First, the trained classifier has an average accuracy of 93.9% for classifying six cold discomfort-related actions. Second, each discomfort-related action is recognized with more than 85% accuracy. Third, classification errors are mostly observed among similar discomfort-related actions. These results indicate that using human action data will enable facility managers to estimate occupants' thermal discomfort and, in turn, adjust the operational settings of HVAC systems to improve the energy efficiency of buildings in conjunction with their thermal comfort levels.