'HEAT' Face Sensor and Autonomous Thermostat

Nurses in high-stress situations may get uncomfortably warm and want to remove face masks and other protective equipment. To tackle this problem, researchers from the University of Michigan  are dynamically adjusting a room’s temperature based on sensors worn by the nurses. The work has stemmed from a system, called Human Embodied Autonomous Thermostat or “HEAT,” that pairs thermal cameras with three-dimensional video cameras to measure whether occupants are hot or cold by tracking their facial temperature. It then feeds the temperature data to a predictive model, which compares it with information about occupants’ thermal preferences. Finally, the system determines the temperature that will keep the largest number of occupants comfortable with minimum energy expenditure.