Human Centric Home
Devices Control

authors-Sharik Ali Ansari; Rahul Nijhawan; Koteswar Rao Jerripothula; Ankush Mittal.

Project Codes
Project Dataset

Problem Description

Air conditioners or heaters, on average, take 2000-3000W of electricity in 1 hour. Comparing this to ceiling fan only consume 50W and tube light only consume 22W. Most of the power consumption of a household, therefore, is attributed to these appliances. Using when needed is appropriate, but leaving them on unnecessarily, cost the owner, reduce life of appliance and waste electricity, which is produced on cost of non-renewable sources like coal in most of the countries, which consequently causes pollution. Also, leaving them on increases monthly slab for the usage of electricity. For Example, leaving them on can make total monthly units used above 400, while turning off will keep overall monthly usage below 200 unit. Note that if monthly usage is below 200, it cost Rs 3.5/unit, and if above 400, it cost Rs5.5/unit.
Also, even when tube light and ceiling fan do not cost much, still leaving them on unnecessary is unfair, considering there are places on this planet where no electricity is available.

What is your idea?

The devices are made to make the life of human beings better and easy. Note, human is the central idea of the previous sentence. So devices must turn on if at least some human is near them to use it. We propose such human centric electricity management for complete household specifically for Air conditioners and room heaters. We propose to use computer vision in appliances to detect humans in its working range. For Example, in a 6 air conditioner hall, only the AC where human is present will turn on rest will remain turn off. The ability to detect human is given to AC or heater itself using a camera and microcontroller.

For one room, one camera is used. The complete house is equipped with cost-effective cameras. Cameras send images to the processing unit, which can be your computer or cell phone, or it can be a dedicated computer that needs to remain on. While AC/heaters consume 3000W, computer use 50 W, thus will save lot of electricity.

The arrangement is made such that when a human leaves the room, all devices turn off behind his back; then, when some human is about to come to that room, before him entering, the devices will be turned on automatically, without him knowing.

Why is it useful?

From the perspective of the owner(electricity consumer):

  1. There is no change at all for him; he won’t even notice the difference as far as the usability of appliances is concerned.
  2. Huge savings because of low electricity usage.
  3. Appliance life will increase. So another saving.
  4. Final beneficiary is our planet earth.

Apart from simple houses, the office spaces and halls can also use it to get optimized use of appliances, electricity, and user experience.
Since this camera-based system is the best input mechanism due to computer vision's evolving field, in the future, using these cameras itself next-generation home automation according to
personalized human behavior can be implemented.

Has it been implemented before?

No. We are first to use computer vision as a part of room appliances, which give the room the ability to work optimally. It is not like other existing home automation, primarily because they until now had only used sensors like proximity sensors and provide IOT based communication. Such an approach is not human centric. In our innovation, there are no such sensors used; instead, a camera is used, which makes it more human-centric.