JP2014219132A - Indoor environment control system - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a system which appropriately detects a location of a person staying in a living room and, thereby can reduce energy of heating or the like without damaging comfort.SOLUTION: Division setting means 8 displays an image of a living room 2 received from image pickup devices 6a, 6b and sets divisions in the living room 2 according to an input operation from a user. Heat radiators H1, H2,..., H6 are disposed on respective divisions D1, D2,..., D6. Further, lighting devices L1, L2,..., L6 are disposed thereon. Person detection means 10 receives an infrared image from infrared image pickup devices 4a, 4b and detects the presence or absence of a person in the living room 2. When detecting the person, a position of his/her footing is specified based on a shape of the infrared image. It is decided which of the divisions set by the division setting means 8 the position of his/her footing is located on and a location of the person staying in the room is determined. A control means 12 controls the heat radiators and the lighting devices based on the determined division on which the person staying in the room exists.

Description

  The present invention relates to an indoor environment control system.

  In order to reduce the amount of energy used for heating houses and buildings, it has been proposed to detect whether or not there are people in the room and control the energy based on this.

  In Patent Document 1, a human body sensor that senses the radiant heat of a human body is provided in a living room. When a person is detected, a set temperature is set as a target temperature, and when no person is detected, a temperature lower by a predetermined temperature than the set temperature is set. A system for controlling as a target temperature is disclosed.

  Patent Document 2 discloses a system including a plurality of hot water mats and a human body detection sensor using radiant heat. In this system, when a person is detected by the human body detection sensor, the hot water is controlled to flow through the hot water mat at the position.

  Patent Document 3 discloses a system using a near-infrared sensor as a human body detection sensor. A plurality of radiation panels and a near infrared sensor are provided on the ceiling surface. When a person is detected by the near-infrared sensor, the energy for cooling and heating the radiation panel is increased.

  Patent Document 4 discloses a system in which a plurality of radiation panels are provided, the surface temperatures of these panels are measured, and the surface temperature of each radiation panel is controlled to be uniform.

  Patent Document 5 discloses a system that corrects the capacity of an indoor air conditioner based on a sunshine sensor provided outside the room.

Patent 3634507 JP 9-318084 A JP-A-5-312388 JP 4-320752 Patent 3162880

  The indoor environment control during the winter period of houses in cold regions is centered on heating and lighting, and the former is one of the important matters related to life and health. Heating a house in a cold region occupies much of the energy consumption of the whole house, but it is normal to maintain comfort by raising the average temperature of the whole room. For example, systems such as Patent Document 1 and Patent Document 5 control the temperature of the entire room.

  However, lowering the average room temperature to reduce energy consumption not only impairs the comfort of the company in the room, but is impractical because it involves life and health in cold regions.

  Therefore, in the systems of Patent Documents 2, 3, and 4 and the like, the energy for heating is reduced by locally heating only the occupants rather than the entire living room. However, in any case, since the human body is detected based on radiant heat, far-infrared rays, etc., there is a problem that it cannot be distinguished from sunshine and appropriate control cannot be performed. Moreover, the same problem has arisen also about indoor lighting.

  This invention solves the above problems and provides a system that can appropriately detect the location of a person in the room and reduce energy such as heating without impairing comfort. With the goal.

(1) The indoor environment control system according to the present invention divides a living room into a plurality of sections, a heat dissipating device provided for each section, an infrared image capturing apparatus that captures the living room to obtain an infrared image, and A human detection means for detecting the presence or absence of a person based on the infrared image, specifying the position of the person's foot in the infrared image to determine which section the person is in, and a human detection means Is detected, and a control means for controlling the heat radiating device of each section based on the section determined that the person exists and the section determined that the person does not exist.

  Therefore, the amount of energy can be adjusted between a section where a person exists and a section where a person does not exist, and the energy amount can be reduced without impairing comfort.

(2) The indoor environment control system according to the present invention further includes a lighting device provided for each section, and the control means detects the person detected by the person detecting means and the section determined that the person exists. The lighting device of each section is controlled based on the section determined that there is no person.

  Therefore, it is possible to adjust the electric power required for lighting in a section where a person exists and a section where a person does not exist, and to reduce the amount of power without impairing comfort.

(3) An indoor control system according to the present invention sets an image capturing device that captures a normal image by capturing substantially the same range as an infrared image capturing device at substantially the same angle, and sets the sections in the normal image. And further comprising a section setting means, wherein the person detecting means has a detected person in any section based on the section set by the section setting means in the normal image corresponding to the infrared image. It is characterized by judging.

  Therefore, the amount of energy can be adjusted according to the section set by the user.

(4) The indoor environment control system according to the present invention further includes sunshine detection means for detecting sunshine based on a density difference in a normal image and estimating an amount of incident energy according to the density difference, wherein the control means includes: It is characterized by determining which section the detected sunshine is based on an infrared image, and controlling the heat radiation amount from the heat radiating device of the section based on the estimated incident energy amount.

  Therefore, the heating control can be appropriately performed in consideration of the energy by sunlight.

(5) The indoor environment control system according to the present invention is characterized in that the heat dissipating device is a facing hot water heat dissipating panel.

  Therefore, heating control can be performed using the hot water radiation panel.

  In the embodiment, “person detection means” corresponds to step S1.

  In the embodiment, “control means” corresponds to step S5.

It is a functional block diagram of the indoor environment control system by one Embodiment of this invention. It is a figure which shows arrangement | positioning of thermal radiation panel P1-P6, illuminating device L1-L6, infrared camera 4a, 4b, and cameras 6a, 6b. It is a figure which shows the thermal radiation panel P1, P2 ... and three-way valve V1, V2 .... It is a figure which shows a hardware configuration. It is a figure which shows the flowchart of the control program 46. FIG. It is a figure for demonstrating distortion correction of an infrared image. It is a figure which shows the binarization of an infrared image. It is a figure which shows the flowchart of control division specification.

1. Overall Configuration FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram of an indoor environment control system according to an embodiment of the present invention. In the corner of the living room 2, a pair of infrared imaging devices 4a and 4b are provided. Similarly, a pair of image pickup devices 6a and 6b are provided. The infrared image capturing device 4a and the image capturing device 6a are arranged so as to capture substantially the same range at the same angle. The same applies to the infrared imaging device 4b and the imaging device 6b.

  The section setting means 8 displays the image of the living room 2 received from the image pickup devices 6a and 6b, and sets the section in the living room 2 in accordance with an input operation from the user. Here, it is assumed that six sections from D1, D2,... D6 are set.

  Each of the sections D1, D2,... D6 is provided with heat dissipating devices H1, H2,. In addition, each of the sections D1, D2,... D6 is provided with lighting devices L1, L2,.

  The person detecting means 10 receives the infrared images from the infrared imaging devices 4a and 4b and detects the presence or absence of a person in the living room 2. When a person is detected, the position of the foot is specified based on the shape of the infrared image. It is determined in which section the step is set by the section setting means 8 and the location of the occupant is determined.

The control means 12 controls the heat dissipating devices H1, H2,... H6 and the lighting devices L1, L2,. Thereby, energy consumption can be reduced without impairing the comfort of occupants.

2. Specific Configuration FIG. 2 shows an arrangement of heat radiation panels P1 to P6, lighting devices L1 to L6, infrared cameras 4a and 4b, and cameras 6a and 6b of an indoor environment control system according to an embodiment.

  FIG. 3 shows the connection relationship between the heat radiation panels P1, P2,..., The three-way valves V1, V2,. From the hot water inflow pipe 20, hot water pipes are connected to the inlets I1, I2,... Of the heat radiating panels P1, P2,. Further, the discharge ports O1, O2,... Of the heat radiation panels P1, P2,. The three-way valves V1, V2,... Are controlled by a control circuit and can be switched between a state in which the hot water inflow pipe 20 and the inflow port are connected and a state in which the hot water inflow pipe 20 and the hot water discharge pipe 20 are connected.

  FIG. 4 shows a hardware configuration when the control circuit is realized by using the CPU 30. A memory 32, a display 34, a hard disk 36, a DVD-ROM drive 38, a keyboard / mouse 40, and an I / O port 42 are connected to the CPU 30.

Three-way valves V1 to V6, illumination devices L1 to L6, infrared cameras 4a and 4b, and cameras 6a and 6b are connected to the I / O port 42. An operating system 44 such as WINDOWS (trademark) and a control program 46 are recorded on the hard disk 36. The control program 46 performs its function in cooperation with the operating system 44. The operating system 44 and the control program 46 are the ones recorded on the DVD-ROM 48 and installed on the hard disk 36 via the DVD-ROM 48 drive 38.

3. Control Processing FIG. 5 shows a flowchart of the control program 46 according to one embodiment of the present invention. First, the CPU 30 determines whether there is a person in the living room 2 based on the infrared images from the infrared cameras 4a, 4b (step S1). The infrared cameras 4 a and 4 b are arranged at positions on the diagonal line of the living room 2. Therefore, the infrared image from the infrared camera 4a is generally distorted as shown in FIG. 6A. In the figure, E is the imaging direction. Similarly, the infrared image by the infrared camera 4b is distorted as shown in FIG. 6B as a whole.

  CPU30 produces | generates an infrared image as shown in FIG. 6C which corrected distortion based on the infrared image of the infrared camera 4a, and the infrared image of the infrared camera 4b.

  Next, the CPU 30 determines whether or not a human body image is included in the infrared image. First, the infrared image is binarized with a predetermined threshold value. Thereby, for example, a binarized image as shown in FIG. 7B can be obtained from an infrared image as shown in FIG. 7A. The binarized image in the infrared image is labeled, and an image having a predetermined size or more is extracted to determine that the person is a person.

  At this time, if there is sunlight in the living room 2, this sunlight is also detected as a binarized image. Therefore, a binarized image having a shape such as a rectangle or a parallelogram is discriminated by determining that it is sunlight. Furthermore, when there is a person where there is sunshine, the temperature where the person is is higher than that of sunshine. Therefore, when sunshine is detected, the threshold value is raised and binarized to extract the portion of the person who overlaps with the sunshine.

  As described above, the presence or absence of a person in the living room 2 is determined.

  When a person is not detected, CPU30 sets heating temperature and illumination to a schedule value (step S10). In this embodiment, all the illuminations are turned off, and the heating temperature is set to a viable lower limit temperature (for example, 17 degrees).

  When a person is detected, the CPU 30 determines which section the person is in, and identifies a section to be controlled according to this (step S2). FIG. 8 shows a flowchart of the control partition specifying process.

  First, the CPU 30 calculates the coordinates X1, X2 of the feet of the right foot and the left foot from the binarized image (step S21). In this embodiment, the coordinates of the tip of the foot are calculated. Next, the CPU 30 calculates the average value of the coordinates X1, X2 of the feet of the right foot and the left foot, and sets it as the position of the person (step S22).

  Subsequently, based on the corresponding positions of the normal images by the cameras 6a and 6b, it is determined which section the person's position is (step S23). In this embodiment, normal images from the cameras 6a and 6b are displayed on the display 34, and the user uses the keyboard / mouse 40 in advance to set sections. Note that the normal image is corrected to a shape without distortion based on the images from the cameras 6a and 6b, similarly to the infrared image. Then, the user draws a section with the mouse using the floor surface in the normal image as a reference, and inputs the section number with the keyboard. In this way, sections are set in advance in the normal image.

  The CPU 30 determines a section where a person exists depending on which section the calculated average coordinate belongs to.

  Then, CPU30 makes the division where a person exists, and the division which opposes this become heating control object (step S24). For example, in FIG. 2, when a person is detected in the section 3, the section 3 and the section 6 are set as heating control targets. In this embodiment, the heating capacity is increased so that a section that is subject to heating control has a target value set as described below. Further, the reason why not only the section where the person is detected but also the facing section is subject to the heating control is that the occupant may feel uncomfortable if the heating is performed on only one side.

  Next, the CPU 30 sets a section where a person exists as a lighting control target (step S25). That is, it is set to turn on the illumination of the section where the person exists.

  Next, CPU30 reads the heating target value set by the occupant (FIG. 5, step S3). In this embodiment, the occupant operates the remote controller, receives this signal at the receiving unit (not shown), and the CPU 30 acquires it.

  Next, the CPU 30 determines whether there is sunshine based on the normal image, and corrects the heating target value if there is (step S4). Whether there is sunshine is determined by taking the difference between the normal image when there is no sunshine and the current normal image, and whether there is a rectangular part or a parallelogram part. When it is determined that there is sunshine, the brightness difference between the brightness of the sunshine part and the brightness of the part other than the sunshine is calculated, and the sunshine energy is estimated. The heating target value is corrected by the amount of sunshine energy. For example, if the amount of sunshine energy raises the section only once, the heating target value is lowered by one degree. Moreover, the target value of illumination is corrected according to the amount of sunlight energy.

  Next, the CPU 30 controls heating based on the corrected heating target value for the heating control target section, and controls lighting based on the corrected lighting target value for the lighting target section (step S5).

  The heating control by the CPU 30 is performed as follows. First, the three-way valves V1 to V6 are controlled so that hot water does not flow through the heat radiating panels in the sections other than the heating control target section. Furthermore, with respect to the heat radiating panel in the heating control target section, the opening degree of the three-way valve is adjusted to control the flow rate of the hot water so that the heating target value is obtained.

  Here, the energy Q is calculated by Q = McΔt. Here, M is the flow rate of hot water per unit time, c is the specific heat of water, and Δt is the difference between the temperature of the hot water entering the heat radiating panel and the temperature of the hot water exiting. The CPU 30 adjusts the flow rate based on the calculation formula.

  In addition, the lighting device can be continuously adjusted in luminance. CPU30 adjusts the brightness | luminance of an illuminating device so that it may become the corrected illumination target value.

When the above process is completed, the CPU 30 repeats the processes after step S1. In this way, in the living room 2, the part where the person is present is heated intensively, and only the part where the person is present is illuminated.

4). Other embodiments
(1) In the above embodiment, both heating control and lighting control are performed. However, only heating control or only lighting control may be performed.

(2) In the above embodiment, the heating control in the case of using the heat radiating panel using hot water has been described. However, the heating control can be applied to other heating devices.

(3) In the above-described embodiment, only the section where people are present is turned on. However, it may be controlled such that the lighting of the section where the person is present is the brightest and the adjacent section is darker than that.

(4) In the above embodiment, the heating control is performed for the section where the person is present and the section facing the section. However, you may make it perform heating control only of the division where a person exists.

Claims (5)

Dividing the living room into a plurality of sections, and a heat dissipation device provided for each section,
An infrared imaging device that captures the room and obtains an infrared image;
Human detection means for detecting the presence or absence of a person based on the infrared image, identifying the person's foot position in the infrared image, and determining which section the person is in;
When a person is detected by the person detection means, a control means for controlling the heat dissipation device of each section based on the section determined that the person exists and the section determined that the person does not exist,
An indoor environment control system comprising: The indoor environment control system according to claim 1,
It further comprises a lighting device provided for each section,
When the person is detected by the person detecting means, the control means controls the lighting device of each section based on the section determined that the person exists and the section determined that the person does not exist. Indoor environment control system. The indoor environment control system according to claim 1 or 2,
An image capturing device for capturing a normal image by capturing substantially the same range as the infrared image capturing device at substantially the same angle;
Section setting means for setting the section in the normal image;
Further comprising
The person detecting means determines in which section the detected person exists based on the section set by the section setting means in the normal image corresponding to the infrared image. Indoor environment control system. In the indoor environment control system in any one of Claims 1-3,
Detecting sunshine based on the density difference in the normal image, further comprising sunshine detection means for estimating the amount of incident energy according to the density difference,
The control means determines which section of the detected sunshine is based on an infrared image, and controls the amount of heat released from the heat radiating device of the section based on the estimated amount of incident energy. A featured indoor environment control system. In the indoor environment control system in any one of Claims 1-4,
The indoor environment control system, wherein the heat dissipating device is a face-to-face hot water heat dissipating panel.

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