JPH0914719A - Temperature control device of cooling/heating device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: To realize a comfortable temperature control based on a value of assumption in a cooling or a heating machine such as an air conditioner or the like by a method wherein a feeling of cold or hot actually felt by a human is accurately assumed without any delay in time. CONSTITUTION: A remote controller 1 is provided with a measuring device 3 for measuring an inpulse of a skin sympathetic nerve from a median nerve at a wrist. The measured sympathetic nerve inpulse is processed for its noise cut, a full-wave rectification, an integral value calculation and a mean value calculation processing, respectively, so as to detect a degree of activeness of the skin sympathetic nerve and transmit it to an air conditioner 2. A control circuit 10 of the air conditioner 2 calculates an assumed vaiue of hot feeling or cold feeling from a detected value of the degree of activation of the skin sympathetic nerve system in reference to a relation of function between the degree of activation of the skin sympathetic nerve system stored in a memory in advance, and a hot or cold feeling assumed value, and it controls a temperature of the main body 11 of the air conditioner in response to the assumed value.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to an air conditioner.
The present invention relates to a control device for an air conditioner such as an air conditioner (hereinafter, referred to as necessary), and more particularly to a control device that operates in response to a thermal sensation actually felt by a human body.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, there has been proposed an air conditioner that senses infrared rays emitted from a human body, recognizes the position of the human body, and controls the air blowing direction of the air conditioner body toward that position (Japanese Patent Publication No. -63431). According to the air conditioner, warm air or cold air can be intensively sent to the human body, which is efficient.

On the other hand, the temperature control of warm air or cold air is generally performed based on the temperature detection of a temperature sensor incorporated in the air conditioner main body or the remote controller, and this method brings the indoor temperature close to the target value. However, the thermal sensation actually felt by the human body does not approach the target value. Therefore, even if the air blowing direction is controlled to the human body position, comfortable air conditioning cannot always be obtained.

Therefore, a method has been proposed in which the temperature of the human body is detected by an infrared sensor provided in the air conditioner body and the temperature of the air conditioner body is controlled based on the detection signal. In this method, an average value of the skin temperature of the face or hand exposed from clothes is measured, and a temperature control signal is created based on the measured data.

[0005]

However, according to the research conducted by the present inventors, it has been found that the thermal sensation actually felt by the human body has a low correlation with the average skin temperature. Comfortable temperature control is difficult with the method. Further, the human body temperature retention function is controlled by the skin sympathetic nerve. For example, in a cold environment, the control of the skin sympathetic nerve reduces the blood flow in the skin, lowers the skin temperature, and releases heat from the skin. By suppressing the, body temperature is kept constant. Therefore, there is a time lag and a decrease in the amount of information between the time the brain issues a command to the skin sympathetic nerve and the change in the skin temperature. Temperature control is difficult.

Therefore, an object of the present invention is to realize a comfortable temperature control based on the estimated value by accurately estimating the thermal sensation actually felt by humans without time delay.

[0007]

A temperature control device for an air conditioner according to the present invention comprises a measuring means for measuring impulses of the skin sympathetic nerve from the median nerve of the wrist and a skin sympathetic nerve based on the measured sympathetic nerve impulse. Detection means for detecting the activity of the nerve, memory means for storing the correspondence between the activity of the skin sympathetic nerve and the estimated value of thermal sensation, and the memory based on the detected activity of the skin sympathetic nerve It comprises arithmetic processing means for deriving a corresponding thermal sensation estimated value from the means, and control means for producing a temperature control signal based on the derived thermal sensation estimated value.

Specifically, the detecting means removes the noise contained in the skin sympathetic nerve impulse, performs the full-wave rectification on the impulse, and integrates the signal obtained from the signal processing means. The integrating means and the average value calculating means for calculating the average value of the integrated signals are output, and the average value is output as the activity of the skin sympathetic nerve.

[0009]

In the temperature controller of the air conditioner, the activity of the skin sympathetic nerve and the estimated value of thermal sensation (self-reported value) are set in advance.
The corresponding relationship with is examined experimentally, and this relationship is stored in the memory means as a functional expression or a table. When controlling the temperature of an air conditioner, for example, the number of bursts of skin sympathetic nerve impulses that occur within a certain period is counted, or another signal amount that increases in accordance with the number of bursts is created, and these count values or signals The amount is detected as the activity of the skin sympathetic nerve. Then, the thermal sensation estimated value corresponding to the detected activity is derived based on the correspondence between the activity of the skin sympathetic nerve and the thermal sensation estimated value stored in the memory means.

A temperature control signal is created based on the thermal sensation estimated value derived in this way, and is used for temperature control of the air conditioner body. For example, a deviation between the derived estimated thermal sensation value and a thermal sensation target value for obtaining a comfortable thermal sensation is calculated, and a temperature control signal corresponding to the deviation is created. Then, the temperature control signal is supplied to the main body of the cooling / heating machine, the rotation speed of the compressor is controlled, and the air conditioning is adjusted.

In a specific configuration of the detecting means, a signal substantially proportional to the number of bursts of skin sympathetic nerve impulses is created by noise removal, full-wave rectification, integration, and average value calculation processing, and the signal is generated. Detected as nerve activity.

[0012]

In the temperature control device for an air conditioner according to the present invention, the thermal sensation actually felt by the human body is estimated based on the skin sympathetic nerve which is directly affected by the thermal sensation. Since temperature control is performed based on the estimated thermal sensation value, accurate temperature control with no time delay is executed, and a comfortable temperature environment is realized.

[0013]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An example in which the present invention is applied to an air conditioner will be described in detail below with reference to the drawings. As shown in FIG. 1, the air conditioner (2) operates in response to an operation signal S from a remote controller (1) having a sympathetic impulse measuring device (3).

The sympathetic impulse measuring instrument (3) comprises a band (15) to be worn on the arm (14) of the operator as shown in FIG. 2, and a reference electrode (12) fixed at the opposite position on the back surface of the band. )
And the sympathetic nerve activity measuring electrode (13) for measuring the impulse of the skin sympathetic nerve.

A sympathetic impulse measuring device (3) as shown in FIG.
The measurement signal by is supplied to the noise cut circuit (4),
After the noise is cut off, the full-wave rectification circuit (5) performs full-wave rectification, and the integration circuit (6) further performs integration. The output signal of the integrating circuit (6) is sent to the average value calculating circuit (7), and the average value is calculated.

FIGS. 4A, 4B and 4C show the above noise cut,
It is a schematic representation of the states of full-wave rectification, integration processing, and average value calculation processing. First, after the original waveform (for example, ± 10 μVp-p) of the sympathetic nerve impulse shown in FIG. 4A is noise-cut at a predetermined level (for example, ± 5 μV),
Perform full-wave rectification as in (b). Then, the full-wave rectified waveform is subjected to integration processing with, for example, a time constant of 0.1 seconds, and
An integrated waveform as shown in (c) is obtained. Then, an average value calculation process is performed on the integrated waveform to obtain an average value. The average value is a value approximately proportional to the number of sympathetic impulse bursts, and represents the sympathetic nerve activity.

FIGS. 5 (a) and 5 (b) show integral value waveforms based on actual measurements of sympathetic impulses at environmental temperatures of 15 ° C. and 30 ° C., respectively. In the case of FIG. 5 (a), the integral value waveforms are shown. Is about 80 μV, and in the case of FIG. 5B, the average value of the integrated value waveform is about 25 μV. In this way, when the environmental temperature rises, the thermal sensation actually felt by the human body rises, the activity of the skin sympathetic nerve decreases, and the average value of the sympathetic impulse integral value decreases. On the contrary, when the environmental temperature lowers, the thermal sensation actually felt by the human body lowers, the activity of the skin sympathetic nerve is activated, and the average value of the sympathetic impulse integral value waveform increases.

Therefore, the average value of the sympathetic nerve integral waveform was changed for three subjects by changing the environmental temperature variously.
(μV) and self-reported value of thermal sensation (Coldest: -100 ~
When the relationship between comfort: 0 and hottest: +100) was examined, the graph of FIG. 3 was obtained. As shown in the figure, a linear relationship is established with a high correlation between the two. Therefore, the thermal sensation can be estimated from the average value of the sympathetic nerve integral waveform.

The average value calculated by the average value calculation circuit (7) in FIG. 1 is transferred from the transmission circuit (8) to the air conditioner.
It is transmitted as an operation signal S to (2). The air conditioner (2) receives the operation signal S from the remote controller (1) at the receiving circuit (9) and supplies the average value of the sympathetic nerve integral waveform included in the received signal to the control circuit (10). .

The control circuit (10) is composed of a microcomputer having a CPU, a memory, etc., and a temperature control signal is generated based on the average value of the sympathetic nerve integral waveform included in the operation signal S. That is, the functional relationship between the average value of the sympathetic nerve integral waveform and the thermal sensation shown in FIG. 3 is stored in the memory of the control circuit (10) in FIG. 1, and the average of the sympathetic nerve integral waveform is based on the functional relationship. The estimated value of the thermal sensation is calculated from the value.

Thereafter, the control of the air conditioner body based on the following equation 1 is executed. Here, T is an estimated value of thermal sensation, and S is a set temperature.

## EQU1 ## if T> +50 then S = S-1 els if T <−50 then S = S + 1

That is, when the estimated value T of the thermal sensation exceeds +50, the set temperature S is lowered by 1 ° C., and when the estimated value T of the thermal sensation is below -50, the set temperature S is changed. 1 ° C
Only raise it. Then, the ON / OFF control or the inverter control similar to the conventional one is performed with the reset temperature S as the target value. As a result, the air conditioner body (11)
Will be controlled to a temperature at which the human body actually feels comfortable.

The description of the above embodiments is for the purpose of illustrating the present invention and should not be construed as limiting the invention described in the claims or reducing the scope thereof. Further, the configuration of each part of the present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiment, and it is needless to say that various modifications can be made within the technical scope described in the claims. For example, the sympathetic impulse measuring device (3) is worn by a plurality of persons, and the average value of the sympathetic impulse integral waveforms obtained for the plurality of persons is simply averaged or averaged with appropriate weighting, It is also possible to control the temperature of the air conditioner based on the average value.

Further, it is possible to use together with a system in which the position of the human body is recognized based on the signal transmitted from the remote controller (1) and the air blowing direction is controlled toward that position. Further, needless to say, the present invention can be widely applied not only to the air conditioner but also to various cooling and heating machines such as a cooling only machine, a fan heater, and an electric kotatsu.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration when the present invention is applied to an air conditioner.

FIG. 2 is a perspective view showing a configuration of a sympathetic nerve impulse measuring device.

FIG. 3 is a graph showing the relationship between the average value of the sympathetic nerve integral waveform and the thermal sensation.

FIG. 4 is a waveform diagram illustrating signal processing for an original waveform of a sympathetic impulse.

FIG. 5 is a diagram comparing waveforms of impulse integral values at two different environmental temperatures.

[Explanation of symbols]

 (1) Remote controller (2) Air conditioner (3) Sympathetic nerve impulse measuring instrument (4) Noise cut circuit (5) Full wave rectifier circuit (6) Integrator circuit (7) Average value calculation circuit (10) Control circuit (11 ) Air conditioner body

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A temperature control device for an air conditioner that operates in response to a thermal sensation received by a human body, the measuring means measuring the impulse of the skin sympathetic nerve from the median nerve of the wrist, and the measured sympathetic nerve impulse. The detection means for detecting the activity of the skin sympathetic nerve, the memory means for storing the correspondence between the activity of the skin sympathetic nerve and the estimated thermal sensation, and the detected activity of the skin sympathetic nerve. Of a cooling / heating machine comprising arithmetic processing means for deriving a corresponding thermal sensation estimated value from the memory means based on the temperature, and control means for producing a temperature control signal based on the derived thermal sensation estimated value. Temperature control device. 2. The detecting means removes noise contained in the skin sympathetic nerve impulse, and performs signal processing means for performing full-wave rectification on the impulse, and integrating means for integrating the signal obtained from the signal processing means. 2. The temperature control device according to claim 1, further comprising: an average value calculating means for calculating an average value of the signals subjected to the integration processing, the average value being output as the activity of the skin sympathetic nerve.