An intelligent home automation control system based on A novel heat pump and wireless sensor networks

One of technology's main goals is to providing comfort to humans. However, in order to be an aid, it has to be easy to install, use and maintain. The ever growing complexity of technological systems can only be achieved by converging different technologies. This is usually expressed as Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), previews the symbiosis of several technologies in order to make them more accessible. This paper attempts to demonstrate the integration between two technologies such as: Heat-pump System and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) to provide a new control mechanism for new building generations so-called smart houses. The proposed control architecture benefits from our developed WSN hardware platform. It enables the user to control and monitor the ventilation system using our developed mobile application and/or a personal computer. Also, the performance of the proposed hardware platform is measured in three different environments in order to observer the coverage area of the WSN.Tiago Gomes is supported by FCT, the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (grant SFRH/BD/90162/2012). This work is supported by FEDER through COMPETE and national funds through FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology in the framework of the project FCOMP-OI-0124-FEDER-022674

Enhancing the efficiency of electricity utilization through home energy management systems within the smart grid framework

The concept behind smart grids is the aggregation of “intelligence” into the grid, whether through communication systems technologies that allow broadcast/data reception in real-time, or through monitoring and systems control in an autonomous way. With respect to the technological advancements, in recent years there has been a significant increment in devices and new strategies for the implementation of smart buildings/homes, due to the growing awareness of society in relation to environmental concerns and higher energy costs, so that energy efficiency improvements can provide real gains within modern society. In this perspective, the end-users are seen as active players with the ability to manage their energy resources, for example, microproduction units, domestic loads, electric vehicles and their participation in demand response events. This thesis is focused on identifying application areas where such technologies could bring benefits for their applicability, such as the case of wireless networks, considering the positive and negative points of each protocol available in the market. Moreover, this thesis provides an evaluation of dynamic prices of electricity and peak power, using as an example a system with electric vehicles and energy storage, supported by mixed-integer linear programming, within residential energy management. This thesis will also develop a power measuring prototype designed to process and determine the main electrical measurements and quantify the electrical load connected to a low voltage alternating current system. Finally, two cases studies are proposed regarding the application of model predictive control and thermal regulation for domestic applications with cooling requirements, allowing to minimize energy consumption, considering the restrictions of demand, load and acclimatization in the system

An Automatic Aggregator of Power Flexibility in Smart Buildings Using Software Based Orchestration

This paper presents a software-based modular and hierarchical building energy management system (BEMS) to control the power consumption in sensor-equipped buildings. In addition, the need of this type of solution is also highlighted by presenting the worldwide trends of thermal energy end use in buildings and peak power problems. Buildings are critical component of smart grid environments and bottom-up BEMS solutions are need of the hour to optimize the consumption and to provide consumption side flexibility. This system is able to aggregate the controls of the all-controllable resources in building to realize its flexible power capacity. This system provides a solution for consumer to aggregate the controls of ‘behind-the-meter’ small loads in short response and provide ‘deep’ demand-side flexibility. This system is capable of discovery, status check, control and management of networked loads. The main novelty of this solution is that it can handle the heterogeneity of the installed hardware system along with time bound changes in the load device network and its scalability; resulting in low maintenance requirements after deployment. The control execution latency (including data logging) of this BEMS system for an external control signal is less than one second per connected load. In addition, the system is capable of overriding the external control signal in order to maintain consumer coziness within the comfort temperature thresholds. This system provides a way forward in future for the estimation of the energy stored in the buildings in the form of heat/temperature and use buildings as temporary batteries when electricity supply is constrained or abundant

ACWA: An AI-driven Cyber-Physical Testbed for Intelligent Water Systems

This manuscript presents a novel state-of-the-art cyber-physical water testbed, namely: The AI and Cyber for Water and Agriculture testbed (ACWA). ACWA is motivated by the need to advance water supply management using AI and Cybersecurity experimentation. The main goal of ACWA is to address pressing challenges in the water and agricultural domains by utilising cutting-edge AI and data-driven technologies. These challenges include Cyberbiosecurity, resources management, access to water, sustainability, and data-driven decision-making, among others. To address such issues, ACWA consists of multiple topologies, sensors, computational nodes, pumps, tanks, smart water devices, as well as databases and AI models that control the system. Moreover, we present ACWA simulator, which is a software-based water digital twin. The simulator runs on fluid and constituent transport principles that produce theoretical time series of a water distribution system. This creates a good validation point for comparing the theoretical approach with real-life results via the physical ACWA testbed. ACWA data are available to AI and water domain researchers and are hosted in an online public repository. In this paper, the system is introduced in detail and compared with existing water testbeds; additionally, example use-cases are described along with novel outcomes such as datasets, software, and AI-related scenarios

IoT Applications Computing

The evolution of emerging and innovative technologies based on Industry 4.0 concepts are transforming society and industry into a fully digitized and networked globe. Sensing, communications, and computing embedded with ambient intelligence are at the heart of the Internet of Things (IoT), the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and Industry 4.0 technologies with expanding applications in manufacturing, transportation, health, building automation, agriculture, and the environment. It is expected that the emerging technology clusters of ambient intelligence computing will not only transform modern industry but also advance societal health and wellness, as well as and make the environment more sustainable. This book uses an interdisciplinary approach to explain the complex issue of scientific and technological innovations largely based on intelligent computing

A User-Centred Methodology to Design and Simulate Smart Home Environments and Related Services

openI progressi nelle tecnologie di automazione e comunicazione all'interno degli edifici residenziali offrono molti interessanti vantaggi per lo sviluppo delle Smart Home, come l'aumento di efficienza energetica, il miglioramento il comfort per gli abitanti e la riduzione dei costi operativi per il proprietario. L'aggregazione e la condivisione dei dati all'interno delle reti possono essere garantite dal moderno approccio denominato Internet delle cose (IoT) e supportati dalle nuove tecnologie dell'informazione e della comunicazione (ICT). Tali tecnologie si stanno evolvendo e le abitazioni stanno diventando luoghi tecnologici popolati da una moltitudine di dispositivi in grado di raccogliere una grande quantità di dati e di cooperare in modo intelligente per controllare tutti i dispositivi connessi, come gli elettrodomestici, l'illuminazione, i sistemi di riscaldamento, ecc. Da un lato, l’intelligenza crescente dei dispositivi connessi produce una grande quantità di dati; dall'altro lato, la complessità di tali dati crea difficoltà di classificazione, trasmissione ed interpretazione delle informazioni utili. Entrambi gli aspetti possono ridurre drasticamente i potenziali vantaggi e limitare la diffusione dei cosiddetti dispositivi “smart”. Mentre a livello aziendale già esistono soluzioni di automazione affermate ed ampiamente utilizzate, le applicazioni per le abitazioni private sono ancora di difficile diffusione a causa della mancanza di standard di comunicazione e della presenza di dispositivi e sistemi altamente eterogenei e quindi di difficile integrazione. Inoltre, anche quando la connessione tra due dispositivi viene stabilita, renderli interoperabili è un’altra grande sfida a causa delle differenze nelle modalità di funzionamento e della difficoltà di integrazione dell'interfaccia. Infatti, le Smart Home non consentono ancora una elevata interoperabilità e gli studi fatti sono spesso fortemente orientati alla tecnologia e concentrati sulle potenzialità dei singoli sottosistemi, trascurando i benefici per gli utenti finali. A tale scopo, questo lavoro definisce un modello di gestione delle informazioni per ambienti domestici intelligenti con lo scopo di supportare la progettazione e la simulazione dei dispositivi “smart” nonché dei servizi sviluppati. Tale modello considera diverse tipologie di dispositivi, le relazioni esistenti tra loro, i flussi informativi e le modalità di interazione dell’utente per modellare correttamente l'ambiente e definirne il comportamento. Il modello sviluppato supporta la progettazione della Smart Home ed è in grado di simulare le funzionalità dei dispositivi con lo scopo finale di valutare i benefici dei servizi forniti.The advances in home automation and communication technologies offer several attractive benefits for the modern smart home, such as increased energy efficiency, improved residential comfort and reduced operative costs for the homeowner. Data aggregation and sharing within the networks can be guaranteed by modern Internet of Things (IoT) approaches and supported by available Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools. Such technologies are evolving and the private houses are becoming technological places populated by a multitude of devices able to collect a huge quantity of data and to cooperate in an intelligent way to control different domains, from household appliances to lighting or heating and ventilation. On one hand, the rising intelligence of smart devices makes a large amount of data available; on the other hand, data complexity creates difficulties in classifying, transmitting and interpreting essential data. Both aspects may drastically reduce the potential advantages and limit the diffusion smart devices. While in building automation proven solutions already exist, tailored applications for private houses and integration among heterogeneous devices and systems are still challenging due to the lack of standards and the variety of adopted communication protocols and data model schemas. Furthermore, even when the device connection and consolidation are achieved, making them cooperate in an interoperable way is another big challenge due to differences in usage paradigms, operation modes and interface integration. In fact, Smart Homes still lack of high interoperability and researches are often strongly technology-oriented and focused on single sub-system potentialities neglecting the expected benefits for the final users. For this purpose, the presented research defines an information management model for the smart home environment to support design and simulation of its devices as well as the enabled services. Such a model considers different device typologies, their mutual relationships, the information flows and the user interaction modalities in order to properly model the environment and define its behavior. It supports the design of the smart home by simulating the devices’ functionalities and estimating the expected performances.INGEGNERIA MECCANICA E GESTIONALEopenCapitanelli, AndreaCapitanelli, Andre