Imagine sitting in a secluded corner of a college library, working steadily on a last-minute paper. Just as you reach the concluding paragraph, summing up your argument, the lights go out, forcing you to get up and wave your arms around. In an energy-efficient room, the lights may be controlled by motion sensors that only turn on when they detect that someone is moving. However, if everyone, like you, is quietly working, the lights can’t register their presence, which doesn’t always serve the students well.
Now, a team from the Lighting Enabled Systems & Applications Engineering Research Center (LESA ERC)—a combined effort of Boston University, the University of New Mexico, Thomas Jefferson University, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) faculty and graduate students—is tackling the problem. Funded primarily by the National Science Foundation, the center researches and designs smart lighting: lights, sensors, and controls that can adapt to better support human productivity, energy efficiency, and wellness. In September 2016, the team was awarded a US patent titled “Sensory Lighting System and Method for Characterizing an Illumination Space” for a system of LED lights and sensors that can detect the location and poses of occupants in a room without using cameras. While occupancy sensing is not a new idea, the innovation is to interpret the reflected light in a room using low-cost sensors built into the lights, without using cameras.
