An intelligent agent for determining home occupancy using power monitors and light sensors

Abstract

Smart homes of the future will have a number of different types of sensors. What types of sensors and how they will be used depends on the behaviour needed from the smart home. Using the sensors to automatically determine if a home is occupied can lead to a wide range of benefits. For example, it could trigger a change in the thermostat setting to save money, or even a change in security monitoring systems. Our prototype Home Occupancy Agent (HOA), which we present in this paper, uses a rule based system that monitors power consumption from meters and ambient light sensor readings in order to determine occupancy. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.