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Innovative Sensing and Actuation for Smart Buildings

Supervisor

Suitable for

MSc in Computer Science

Abstract

Sensorisation and actuation in smart buildings and the development of smart HVAC (heat, ventilation and air-conditioning) control strategies for energy management allow for optimised energy usage, leading to the reduction in power consumption or to optimised demand/response strategies that are key in a rather volatile market. This can further lead to optimised maintenance for the building devices.

Of course the sensorisation of buildings leads to heavy requirements on the overall infrastructure. Further, we plan to investigate approaches to perform meta-sensing, namely to extrapolate the knowledge from physical sensors towards that of virtual elements (as an example, to infer the current building occupancy from correlated measurements of temperature and humidity dynamics).

On the actuation side, we are likewise interested in engineering non-invasive minimalistic solutions, which are robust to uncertainty and performance-certified.

The plan for this project is to make the first steps in this direction, based on recent results in the literature. The project can benefit from a visit to industrial partners.

Courses: Computer-Aided Formal Verification.

Prerequisites: Some familiarity with dynamical systems.