SBIR Phase II:An IoT Smart Shower for Hotel Utility Savings

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）二期项目的更广泛的影响和商业潜力是，通过节省2000亿加仑的水和1万亿千瓦时的能源，每年在美国各地节省超过500亿美元的建筑公用事业成本。减少对水和能源的总体需求可以减轻市政基础设施的压力。提出的项目包括一个高度精确的方法，以在炎热潮湿的环境中生成有价值的公用事业终端用户行为数据。公共和私人组织可以利用这些数据来设计更好的政策和最佳实践。此外，占用检测技术可用于其他应用，在困难的环境条件阻止使用传统传感器。除了给用户带来经济和环境效益外，这项业务还将创造工程、销售和客户支持方面的工作。这一计划将消除因洗澡者在热水预热后离开而造成的行为性水浪费。项目目标包括开发：(1)一种能够在多个淋浴/浴缸布局中准确感知淋浴占用情况的设备；(2)低功耗电路和算法，延长电池寿命；(3)针对淋浴房湿热环境设计的外壳系统工程。项目任务包括传感器精度的信号分析，在多个建筑物的所有房间进行现场试点测试，工业设计和加速老化测试。技术里程碑包括：(1)设计一种传感器，在至少25个不同的酒店浴缸/淋浴布局中测试时，在1%的误差范围内检测到人类的存在，(2)在至少3家酒店的房间中完成至少1年的用户赞助的现场试点测试，以及(3)证明与基线相比，节省的淋浴水量和能源至少为20%。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to save over $50 billion in building utility costs annually across the U.S. by saving 200 billion gallons of water and 1 trillion kWh of energy. Reducing the overall water and energy demand decreases the strain on municipal infrastructure. The proposed project consists of a highly accurate method to generate valuable utility end-user behavior data in hot, humid environments. Public and private organizations can use the data to design better policies and best practices. Moreover, the occupancy detection technology can be used for other applications where difficult ambient conditions prevent the use of conventional sensors. In addition to the economic and environmental benefits to the user, the business will create engineering, sales, and customer support jobs. The proposed project will eliminate behavioral water waste occurring when a bather leaves a shower unoccupied even after water warm-up. Project objectives include development of: (1) a device that can accurately sense shower occupancy across multiple shower/bathtub layouts; (2) a low energy circuit and algorithm for long battery life; and (3) systems engineering of a designed enclosure resilient to a shower's hot and humid environment. Project tasks include signal analysis for sensor accuracy, in-situ pilot testing across all rooms of multiple buildings, industrial design and accelerated aging tests. Technical milestones include: (1) Design a sensor that detects human presence within a 1% error margin when tested across at least 25 different hotel bathtub/shower layouts, (2) Complete live user-sponsored pilot tests in the rooms of at least 3 hotels for at least 1 year, and (3) Demonstrate that the amount of shower water and energy saved is at least 20% when compared to the baseline.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.