Household occupancy detection based on electric energy consumption

Abstract

It is possible to detect the presence of residents in a home by monitoring its energy consumption. Currently, the state of the art provides us with a number of approaches. Some studies leverage intrusive systems which require user interaction. Others employ sensors to detect the presence of people in a non-intrusive way. In this article, we propose the use of a sensor network for measuring electric energy consumption in a home. A multi-agent system is used to manage the data generated by the deployed sensor network in an intelligent way. A non-intrusive occupation monitoring algorithm was designed to determine when a house is occupied and when it is empty.