Energy Disaggregation for Real-Time Building Flexibility Detection

Energy is a limited resource which has to be managed wisely, taking into account both supply-demand matching and capacity constraints in the distribution grid. One aspect of the smart energy management at the building level is given by the problem of real-time detection of flexible demand available. In this paper we propose the use of energy disaggregation techniques to perform this task. Firstly, we investigate the use of existing classification methods to perform energy disaggregation. A comparison is performed between four classifiers, namely Naive Bayes, k-Nearest Neighbors, Support Vector Machine and AdaBoost. Secondly, we propose the use of Restricted Boltzmann Machine to automatically perform feature extraction. The extracted features are then used as inputs to the four classifiers and consequently shown to improve their accuracy. The efficiency of our approach is demonstrated on a real database consisting of detailed appliance-level measurements with high temporal resolution, which has been used for energy disaggregation in previous studies, namely the REDD. The results show robustness and good generalization capabilities to newly presented buildings with at least 96% accuracy.Comment: To appear in IEEE PES General Meeting, 2016, Boston, US

The use of reciprocal teaching as a mediational tool to enhance reading comprehension

The purpose of this project was to study how Reciprocal Teaching can best serve students in a third grade classroom for reading comprehension. A curriculum was developed to help the classroom teacher find a better way to teach reading comprehension using four important reading strategies: predicting, summarzing, clarifying and questioning. Several mediated tools were developed to enhance reading comprehension with clear explanations on how to implement Reciprocal Teaching with the current curriculum and California Standards on comprehension

Genre interference in the process of foreign language speaking training

This article is devoted to a study of speech genre competence formation in technical students studying foreign language (English or Russian as a foreign). Correlations of terms of speech genre theory and types of speech genre classification are the subject of this work; the need to form speech genre competence as a component of communicative competence during the educational process is substantiated. The authors suppose that during the process of learning a foreign language, processes not only of phonetic, grammar and lexical, but also of genre interference are observed. On the basis of a «genre» experiment, material types of deviations from genre forms were classified, a hypothesis for the reasons for deviation was developed, comparison study of speech product in foreign (non-native) and native language, was carried out. Conclusion on significant interfering influence of native language on formation of speech genre competence of secondary linguistic identity was drawn

AtomXR: Streamlined XR Prototyping with Natural Language and Immersive Physical Interaction

As technological advancements in extended reality (XR) amplify the demand for more XR content, traditional development processes face several challenges: 1) a steep learning curve for inexperienced developers, 2) a disconnect between 2D development environments and 3D user experiences inside headsets, and 3) slow iteration cycles due to context switching between development and testing environments. To address these challenges, we introduce AtomXR, a streamlined, immersive, no-code XR prototyping tool designed to empower both experienced and inexperienced developers in creating applications using natural language, eye-gaze, and touch interactions. AtomXR consists of: 1) AtomScript, a high-level human-interpretable scripting language for rapid prototyping, 2) a natural language interface that integrates LLMs and multimodal inputs for AtomScript generation, and 3) an immersive in-headset authoring environment. Empirical evaluation through two user studies offers insights into natural language-based and immersive prototyping, and shows AtomXR provides significant improvements in speed and user experience compared to traditional systems.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures, in submissio

Demand Forecasting at Low Aggregation Levels using Factored Conditional Restricted Boltzmann Machine.

The electrical demand forecasting problem can be regarded as a non-linear time series prediction problem depending on many complex factors since it is required at various aggregation levels and at high resolution. To solve this challenging problem, various time series and machine learning approaches has been proposed in the literature. As an evolution of neural network-based prediction methods, deep learning techniques are expected to increase the prediction accuracy by being stochastic and allowing bi-directional connections between neurons. In this paper, we investigate a newly developed deep learning model for time series prediction, namely Factored Conditional Restricted Boltzmann Machine (FCRBM), and extend it for demand forecasting. The assessment is made on the EcoGrid EU dataset, consisting of aggregated electric power consumption, price and meteorological data collected from 1900 customers. The households are equipped with local generation and smart appliances capable of responding to real-time pricing signals. The results show that for the energy prediction problem solved here, FCRBM outperforms the benchmark machine learning approach, i.e. Support Vector Machine

Big IoT data mining for real-time energy disaggregation in buildings (extended abstract)

In the smart grid context, the identification and prediction of building energy flexibility is a challenging open question. In this paper, we propose a hybrid approach to address this problem. It combines sparse smart meters with deep learning methods, e.g. Factored Four-Way Conditional Restricted Boltzmann Machines (FFW-CRBMs), to accurately predict and identify the energy flexibility of buildings unequipped with smart meters, starting from their aggregated energy values. The proposed approach was validated on a real database, namely the Reference Energy Disaggregation Dataset