JPH04316946A - Control device for air-conditioner - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To realize comfortable air-conditioning and life environment by a method wherein amenity of a man is conjectured based on indoor and outdoor environment conditions, the position of a man in a room, and stability of indoor environment, a control signal from an air-conditioner is generated according to a conjecture result, and properly supplemented. CONSTITUTION:Indoor and outdoor environment conditions 20 are detected by means of a sensor 1 in an air-conditioner 6 to output a result. A position 20a of a man is detected by a position sensor 1a to output a result. Further, based on a sensor output 22, a hysteresis during past N-seconds is stored in a memory means 2 and an inclination 26, produced at intervals of N-seconds, of an indoor temperature is outputted. Meanwhile, an airflow and a set temperature value 24 by a user are outputted through remote control or from a control panel 4. The outputs are respectively inputted to a look-up table 3 to generate a control signal 25 for the air-conditioner 6. Thereafter, a part needing supplement of the control signal 25 is supplemented by a supplement part 5 based on outputs 21 and 26 to generate a final control signal 27.

Description

[Detailed description of the invention]

0001

[Industrial Application Field] The present invention improves the comfort of people indoors by automatically controlling the temperature, air volume, and direction of air in an air conditioner equipped with a microcomputer. The present invention relates to a control device for an air conditioner to improve the quality of air conditioners.

0002

[Prior Art] When controlling the room temperature with an air conditioner, in the example of heating, the indoor target temperature of the air conditioner is controlled to be shifted to a higher level for a certain period of time in order to improve the characteristics when the indoor temperature rises. A method was adopted in which the compressor operating frequency was controlled by temperature.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram showing an outline of a conventional air conditioner control device. The control signal generating means 19 in FIG.
A control signal 44 is generated from a user's set temperature 45 or the like from a remote control or operation panel 4 that is operated from the outside.

For example, during heating, if it has been less than 60 minutes since the power was turned on, the indoor target temperature may be set 2°C higher than the set temperature set using the remote controller or operation panel 4 in order to quickly raise the indoor temperature. The indoor temperature adjustment 46 of the air conditioner 6 is controlled in accordance with the setting.

[0005]

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] Conventional air conditioner control devices control only the time after power is turned on and indoor temperature characteristics. cannot flexibly deal with environmental conditions (transient/stable). For example, when the load is too low, the room temperature becomes too high than the target temperature, and when the load is too high, the room temperature becomes too low than the target temperature. There are some differences in temperature, and if the distance from the air conditioner is far, the set temperature may not be reached, so there is also the problem that the comfort of the people in the room is not taken into consideration.

The sense of comfort of a person indoors is determined by the indoor environmental conditions such as indoor humidity, temperature, air velocity, and surrounding wall radiant temperature, as well as the human condition determined by the human metabolic rate and amount of clothing. An air conditioner can provide comfortable air conditioning by taking into account the indoor environment by estimating the surrounding wall radiant temperature of the room in which it is installed. In view of the above problems, it is an object of the present invention to realize a more comfortable air-conditioned environment by estimating the sense of comfort of people indoors.

[0007]

[Means for Solving the Problems] In order to achieve this object, the present invention provides a plurality of sensor means for detecting indoor and outdoor environmental conditions provided in an air conditioner, and a position detection means for detecting the position of a person. and storage means for retaining the previous state of the sensor means, and determining whether the indoor environmental condition is a transient state or a stable state from the outputs from the sensor means and the storage means, and the determination value and the output value from the sensor means and the storage means. and a control signal that estimates the comfort of a person in the room from the temperature value set by the user and the output value from the human position detection means and generates first control signals for the air outlet temperature, wind direction, and air volume of the air conditioner. generating means and a value input to the control signal generating means to interpolate the first output signal output from the control signal generating means to generate control signals such as the air outlet temperature, wind direction, and air volume of the air conditioner; The present invention proposes a control device for an air conditioner characterized by comprising a second control signal generating means for generating a second control signal.

[0008]

[Operation] According to the configuration of the present invention described above, the estimation means determines the indoor and outdoor environmental conditions detected by the plurality of sensor means and the indoor environmental condition (transient/stable) and the sensor stored in the storage means. The sense of comfort of a person in a room is estimated from the previous state of the means, the temperature set by the user, and the position of the person detected by the position detection means. Then, based on the human's sense of comfort estimated by the estimation means, a control signal is generated by the control signal generation means to control the air conditioner. Air conditioning and living environment can be realized.

[0009]

Embodiments Hereinafter, embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to FIGS. 1 to 4.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the basic configuration of an air conditioner control device according to a first embodiment of the present invention.

In FIG. 1, 1 is a sensor, 20, 21,
22 is a sensor signal value from sensor 1, 20 is a storage means,
23 and 26 are slopes of the suction temperature output from the storage means 2 at intervals of N seconds; 4 is a remote control or operation panel; 24
is an output signal from the remote control or operation panel 4, 3 is a look-up table, 25 is a control signal output from the look-up table 3, 5 is an interpolation section, 27 is a control signal output from the interpolation section 5, 6 is an air signal In the harmonic machine, 1a is a position sensor, and 20a is a position signal of the person 1b from the position sensor 1a.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a look-up table creation circuit in FIG. 1.

In this figure, 7 is the outdoor temperature, 8 is the suction temperature, 9 is the slope of the suction temperature, 10 is the air volume, 11 is the temperature set by the user, and 12 is the year, month, day, and year inputted from the remote controller 4, etc. time information, 13 is a neural network model means including a determination means for determining whether the indoor environmental condition is transient or stable, 15 is a control signal generation means, and 14 is an actually measured comfort level (hereinafter referred to as PMV) or standard new validity. temperature (hereinafter referred to as SET), 35a is the judgment output of the indoor environmental state, and 35b is the PMV (or SE) estimated from the neural network schematic means 13.
T), 34 is the comfort level (PMV or SET) from the actually measured PMV (or SET), 36 is the control signal, 12a is the human position information, 3 is the lookup table, 28, 29,
30, 31, 32, 33, 33a are each at outdoor temperature 7
, suction temperature 8, suction temperature slope 9, air volume 10,
These are signals from the user's temperature setting 11, year/month/day/time information 12, and human position information 12a.

Since the air conditioner according to the embodiment of the present invention has the above-described configuration, sensor signals 20 are output from the plurality of sensors 1 in the air conditioner 6, as shown in FIG. become. This signal 20 includes outside temperature, suction temperature, humidity, human body temperature, etc.

Further, a signal 22 similar to the signal 20 is outputted from the sensor 1 and inputted to the storage means 2. The storage means 2 stores the history of the inputted sensor output signal 22 for the past N seconds (N is a positive real number). The air volume and the user's set temperature value 24 are output from the remote control or the operation panel 4, and the storage means 2 outputs the state before the sensor, for example, the slope 23 of the room temperature at N second intervals (N is a positive real number). . Furthermore, position information 20 of the human being is sent from the position sensor 1a.
a is output.

As shown in FIG. 3, this position sensor 1a divides the room into N×M zones and outputs which zone of the room the person 1b is in. For example, in the i zone, the output signal 20a of the position sensor 1a is i.

Output signals 2 from each means 1, 2, 4, 1a
3, 24, and 20a are input to a lookup table 3 as input signals, and a control signal 25 for the air conditioner 6 is obtained from this lookup table 3.

This control signal 25 is supplied to the interpolation section 5. The interpolation unit 5 is supplied with the output value 21 from the sensor 1 and the output value 26 from the storage means 2, and the interpolation unit 5 interpolates the part of the control signal 25 that requires interpolation, The air conditioner is passed to the air conditioner 6, and the air conditioner is operated.

By this control signal 27, the air conditioner 6
The inverter frequency, wind direction, air volume, indoor target temperature setting, etc. will be controlled. For example, the air conditioner 6 is determined based on the outside temperature, suction temperature, air volume, set temperature, slope of the suction temperature, indoor environmental condition (transient/stable), etc. from each of the means 1, 2, 4, and 1a. A shift amount for calculating a target indoor temperature is determined. The relationship between this shift amount, the temperature set by the user, and the indoor target temperature is as follows: indoor target temperature=user set temperature+shift amount. Therefore, the control signal 25 obtained from the lookup table 3 is interpolated by the interpolation unit 5, and inputted to the air conditioner 6 as a control signal 27. Execute driving.

[0020] In this way, the indoor temperature is adjusted. Next, a method for creating the lookup table 3 in FIG. 1 will be explained with reference to FIG. 2.

In FIG. 2, the neural network schematic means 13 has an outdoor temperature of 7, an indoor temperature of 8, and an interval of N seconds (N is a positive real number).
In addition to the slope 9 of the indoor temperature 7 found in
Input a etc. and check the indoor environmental condition judgment result 35a and PMV.
The estimated value 35b of is output. The neural network schematic means 1
3 is the determination of the indoor environment and the actual PM measured indoors.
Using V14 as the learning data 34, learning is performed to output an estimated value 35b of the actually measured PMV (predicted average number of votes) 14.

There are various learning algorithms for the neural network model means 13, such as the back propagation algorithm (Reference: Runmelhar
t,D. E. and McClelland, J.
L. (Eds.), “Parallel Distr.
ibuted Processing, Explorer
ation in the Microstru
The culture of Cognition. Vol1.
1, 2, MIT Press, Cambridge
(1986)), the optimal solution is found using the least descent method. When the PMV (predicted average number of votes) can be sufficiently estimated by the neural network model means 13, if the indoor environmental state is in a transient state and the sense of comfort is unsatisfactory, the output value 35a of the neural network model means 13 is and 35b, the control signal generating means 15 generates a control signal 36 that can maximize the capacity of the air conditioner. Further, when the indoor environmental condition is stable and the feeling of comfort is satisfactory, the control signal 36 is generated by the control signal generating means 15 so that the feeling of comfort can be maintained. The neural network model means 13 and the control signal generation means 15 receive sensor inputs of outdoor temperature 7 to human position information 1.
The lookup table 3 is created by roughly quantizing and inputting each of the input signals 28 to 33a of 2a and writing the results into the lookup table 3. When creating the lookup table means 3, the output of the neural network model means 13 is converted from a continuous quantity to a discrete quantity. Therefore, in the present invention, when reading the created table, linear interpolation is performed to obtain more fine-grained information. control. Figure 4 shows the interpolation method.

For example, when the suction temperature is referenced in 1°C increments as input to the lookup table 3, in order to enable the suction temperature in 0.5°C increments, the suction temperature 38 is changed to 2 as shown in FIG. If the temperature is 5°C, adder 17 refers to the contents of lookup table 16 for 2°C and 3°C, and adds the result to 1/2 in divider 18 to control the temperature to 2.5°C. The signal value is set to 42.

As mentioned above, as a means of knowing the human condition, metabolic rate and amount of clothing are estimated by the user's set temperature and human body temperature sensor, etc., and the indoor and outdoor temperatures, the air volume of the air conditioner, and the indoor temperature are used. The indoor environment condition (transient/stable) that can be detected by the air conditioner, such as the slope at intervals of N seconds (N is a positive real number), is determined, and the comfort level of the people in the room is estimated. A control signal for the air conditioner is generated based on the environmental state determination value and the comfort value. Examples of estimated comfort include Predicted Average Votes (PMV), which calculates comfort based on the human condition and indoor environment, or Standard New Effective Temperature (SET), which predicts human physiological states and sensations. ), the output value of the sensor is input to the neural network model circuit, and it learns to estimate PMV and SET, so that it can estimate PMV and SET, and the control signal is generated from the estimation result. I am trying to generate it.

[0025] The neural network model circuit and the control signal generation part are replaced with a storage device for a lookup table that matches the input value of the sensor, and the parts where information is missing due to the lookup table are replaced by the contents of the lookup table. The control signal is generated by interpolation.

[0026]

As described above, claim 1 of the present invention provides a control device for an air conditioner that performs indoor temperature air conditioning by controlling indoor temperature, air volume, and air direction. a plurality of sensor means for detecting environmental conditions; and storage means for retaining a previous state of the sensor means;
A detecting means for detecting the position of a person in the room, and determining whether the indoor environmental condition is a transient state or a stable state from the outputs from the sensor means and the storage means, and combining the determined value and the output value from the sensor means and the storage means. First control of the air temperature, wind direction, and air volume of the air conditioner by estimating the comfort of the person in the room, the position of the person, and the number of people in the room from the temperature value set by the user and the output value from the human position detection means. A control signal generation means for generating a signal; and a second control signal for controlling the air conditioner by interpolating the first output signal outputted from the control signal generation means based on the value input to the control signal generation means. Since the air conditioner is configured to include a means for generating , it is possible to estimate the indoor environment and the comfort of people and realize a more comfortable air conditioning and living environment.

[0027] According to a second aspect of the present invention, the sensor means is a detector for indoor and outdoor temperature, air volume of an air conditioner, and humidity;
Since the frequency of the air conditioner's inverter compressor is controlled using the control signal of

According to a third aspect of the present invention, by storing the gradient of the temperature of the intake air of the air conditioner in the storage means at intervals of N seconds, the load condition of the room during use can be accurately grasped, and overshoot etc. can be prevented. Comfort can be improved by preventing

Claim 4 of the present invention provides that the control signal generating means comprises:
Since the output of the function for estimating the comfort level of people in the room can be referred to by the input of the control signal generating means, the estimation calculation time is long when the neural network is applied to the air conditioner, and a large computer is required. Although this is necessary, by storing it in a lookup table, it can be processed by the microcomputer installed in the air conditioner, achieving a significant cost advantage.

[0030] Claim 5 of the present invention provides a more accurate sense of comfort in the indoor environment by using the position of the person, the number of people, and the surrounding wall radiant temperature as the sense of comfort of the person in the room controlling the air conditioner. It can be understood as

Claim 6 of the present invention provides a predicted mean vote (PMV) calculated based on the human condition and indoor environment as a human comfort feeling, or a standard new effective temperature that predicts human physiological conditions and sensations. By using (SET) as the sense of comfort for people indoors, it has been established as an index of human comfort, so it is possible to easily calculate accurate comfort without causing problems such as misunderstanding comfort. Therefore, control becomes easy.

Claim 7 of the present invention provides that the control signal generating means comprises:
A neural circuit that has learned the comfort of a person depending on the position of the person and the amount of the person in the room, in order to estimate the comfort of the person indoors from the output of the sensor means installed in the air conditioner for detecting indoor and outdoor environmental conditions. Since it is a network model (neural network), it is an excellent means of finding accurate comfort from a lot of information (indoor/outdoor temperature, humidity, air volume, human position, number of people, etc.), and has a learning function. Therefore, it is possible to obtain a method of controlling comfort according to various situations, and it is possible to improve comfort.

Claim 8 of the present invention is that the estimating means estimates the condition of the people in the room based on the temperature setting of the user, the position of the user, and the number of people in the room. ) and can realize comfort tailored to the individual.

Claim 9 of the present invention is that the estimating means is the year, month, day, and time information inputted from a remote control, etc., so the season can be known and it can be determined whether it is morning or night. It is possible to take into consideration the comfort of the people who live there, and can feel comfortable all year round.

For example, since September is the season when summer passes into autumn, humans are accustomed to the heat, so it is more comfortable for humans to set the temperature higher than in June and July.

[0036] Claim 10 of the present invention provides that the determining means controls the air conditioner more precisely because it determines whether the output value output from the sensor is within a range set with respect to the target value or outside the range. This makes it possible to improve room temperature fluctuations and improve comfort.

As described above, the present invention has many effects.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a basic configuration block diagram showing an embodiment of an air conditioner control device according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a look-up table creation circuit of the air conditioner control device according to the present invention.

[Figure 3]
Explanatory diagram showing the position information of humans in Figures 1 and 2

FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating the processing of the interpolation unit of the air conditioner control device according to the present invention.

[Figure 5] Block diagram showing a conventional air conditioner control device

[Explanation of symbols]

1 Sensor 2. Storage means 3 Lookup table means 4. Remote control or operation panel 5 Interpolation section 6 Air conditioner 1a Position sensor 12 Year/month/day/time information 12a Human location information

Claims (10)

[Claims] 1. An air conditioner is equipped with a plurality of sensor means for detecting indoor and outdoor environmental conditions, a memory means for retaining the previous state of the sensor means, and a position detection means for detecting the position of a person in the room. Then, it is determined whether the indoor environmental condition is a transient state or a stable state from the outputs from the sensor means and the storage means, and the determination value, the output value from the sensor means and the storage means, and the temperature set by the user are determined. and the output value from the human position detection means to estimate the comfort of the person in the room, the position of the person, and the number of people in the room to generate first control signals for the temperature, direction, and volume of the air blowing from the air conditioner. a control signal generating means, and a first output from the control signal generating means according to a value input to the control signal generating means;
A control device for an air conditioner, comprising: means for interpolating an output signal of and generating a second control signal for controlling the air conditioner. 2. The sensor means is a detector for indoor and outdoor temperature, air volume of an air conditioner, and humidity, and the second control signal allows
2. The control device for an air conditioner according to claim 1, wherein the control device controls the frequency of an inverter compressor of the air conditioner. 3. The gradient of the intake air temperature of the air conditioner obtained from the signal of the sensor means is stored in the storage means at intervals of N seconds (N is a positive real value). Air conditioner control device. 4. The control signal generation means is a look-up table corresponding to the indoor environmental state, which allows the output of a function for estimating the comfort of a person in the room to be referenced by the input of the control signal generation means. The control device for an air conditioner according to claim 1. 5. The control device for an air conditioner according to claim 1, wherein the position of the person, the size of the person, and the surrounding wall radiant temperature are used as the sense of comfort of the person in the room controlling the air conditioner. . Claim 6: The predicted average vote (PMV), which is calculated based on the human condition and indoor environment, or the standard new effective temperature (SET), which is calculated based on the human condition and indoor environment, as a sense of human comfort. 2. The control device for an air conditioner according to claim 1, wherein the control device is used to provide a sense of comfort to a person. 7. The control signal generating means is configured to detect the position of a human being and the sense of comfort of the human being in the room from the output of the sensor means provided in the air conditioner for detecting indoor and outdoor environmental conditions. 2. The control device for an air conditioner according to claim 1, wherein the control device is a neural circuit model means (neural network) that has learned the degree of human comfort. 8. The air conditioner control device according to claim 1, wherein the estimating means estimates the condition of the people in the room based on the temperature setting of the user, the position of the user, and the number of people in the room. 9. The control device for an air conditioner according to claim 1, wherein the estimating means is information on year, month, day, and time inputted from a remote control or the like. 10. The determination means according to claim 1, wherein the determination means determines that the sensor output value is in a stable state when it is within a range set with respect to the target value, and otherwise determines that the state is in a transient state. Air conditioner control device.