Increased energy savings is a desirable goal for organizations and households alike. That’s why there’s a growing number of solutions concerning artificial intelligence (AI) for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. Here are some compelling ways AI improves HVAC systems and benefits the people who use them.

Keeping Rooms More Comfortable Without Wasting Energy

Even as climate control systems get more advanced, it’s still difficult to keep everyone content with the temperature. The challenges rise with the number of people in a space. It’s much easier for four people in a household to agree on a comfortable temperature compared to two-dozen attendees in a meeting room, for example.

A project at the University of Michigan previews future potential. Researchers developed an autonomous HVAC system that uses thermal cameras to detect whether people in a room are hot or cold. Measurements of occupants’ facial temperatures get fed into an algorithm that compares the real-time data with the people’s climate preferences.

Next, the technology determines how to keep the most individuals happy about the temperature with minimum energy usage. Early work on this project involved testing it on 10 workers in a lab setting. The developers said their approach did not require participants to wear detection devices, nor was it necessary to have one camera to monitor each participant.

After the system gets installed, people periodically provide data from their smartphones by indicating their temperature comfort level on a three-point scale. Once they confirm whether they feel too hot, too cold, or just right, the AI ​​takes that information and uses it to make future adjustments.

Reducing Energy Poverty

Energy poverty is a prevalent concern in today’s society. People define it in different ways. For example, one common definition is spending more than 10% of a household’s income on heating and cooling costs. This issue can also emerge when people live in areas without reliable energy infrastructures.

Energy Poverty Can Create Home Dangers

Besides making people uncomfortable, stressed over energy bills, and forcing them to restrict many activities to daylight hours, energy poverty can pose genuine dangers. For example, statistics show that 40% of the world’s population does not have clean, modern energy sources for cooking.

They burn solid fuels, like wood and dung, which can fill the living area with smoke and toxic chemicals. Then, people are at risk for ailments ranging from lung cancer to cataracts.

The Pandemic Worsened Energy Poverty

The struggle to pay energy bills also affects residents in highly developed areas of the world. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, a United Kingdom charity saw a 23% rise in people needing emergency help with heating and cooling expenses. However, experts believe AI could stop energy poverty by detecting signs of distress that would otherwise get overlooked.

dr Aidan O’Sullivan is a University College London professor working at the intersection of energy and AI. He explained, “What AI can really help with is correctly identifying the customers who should be receiving support.” He’s building HVAC machine learning neural networks that take data from smart devices. However, that’s not a straightforward endeavor.

“The signals that suggest a household is starting to struggle with their energy use are complex. For example, someone might repeatedly reduce their consumption at the end of the month as they run out of money, which is a subtle signal that can get lost when averaging data,” O’Sullivan clarified. However, algorithms could trigger an AI chatbot to engage with a customer and go over their options.

A trial conducted elsewhere also showed that smart controls helped vulnerable parties heat their homes to levels they couldn’t before using the technology. There’s no universally successful way to apply AI to energy management, but these examples highlight some of the exciting possibilities.

Preventing HVAC System Failures

Most people hardly think about their HVAC system until things go wrong. However, it can become costly to ignore even minor changes in equipment behavior. For example, a clogged or full filter could make an air conditioner run more often than it should, reducing component life spans. Replacing or cleaning the filter could bring up to a 15% increase in efficiency.

Many organizational leaders find AI improves HVAC operations by predicting failures before they happen. That’s critical in places like apartment buildings, hospitals, and manufacturing facilities that need tight climate controls to support their production.

However, AI-based predictive maintenance warnings are accessible to some homeowners, too. Google Nest smart thermostats already had some artificial intelligence capabilities built into them. For example, when the device senses an empty house, it automatically switches to an energy-saving temperature. It also learns users’ preferences.

In 2020, Google began testing features on its smart thermostats that detected possible problems. When the technology identified something unusual, it sent an email alert to someone in the home. The content included which system had the abnormality and helped people in some cities connect with HVAC professionals.

One of the goals was to help residents get HVAC problems checked before they cause major issues. AI can detect small changes, such as at elevated operating temperature or excessive vibration. Then, people have the insights they need to act before suddenly finding themselves without functional heating or air conditioning.

Facilitating Significant Energy Savings

Many smart devices prevent mistakes that could cause wastage. For example, sensor-equipped sinks automatically turn off once a person takes their hands from under the faucet. Smart lighting systems work similarly, automatically darkening a no-longer-occupied room. In such cases, there are no worries about higher bills when someone forgets to turn off the lights.

HVAC machine learning algorithms can give some of the same financial payoffs. For example, they can identify excessive usage trends earlier, helping someone target the cause before they receive a surprising bill.

AI analysis could also highlight the costliest pieces of HVAC equipment, convincing decision-makers it’s time to upgrade. Since some AI-based HVAC systems only activate when necessary, they can help users reduce their overall energy usage.

In one example, a Marriott hotel in China achieved a 50% decrease in energy consumption by installing an intelligent HVAC system. Besides saving electricity, this upgrade resulted in a quieter setup.

People often want to cut their energy costs but don’t know which steps to take. AI can solve this common issue by working in the background and responding to environmental changes humans don’t immediately notice.

AI Improves HVAC Performance

These are just some of the many reasons people are increasingly curious about how AI could positively impact HVAC systems. Having access to affordable, well-functioning climate controls improves the quality of life for individuals and increases the likelihood of enterprises enhancing their operations.

Emily Newton is the editor-in-chief of Revolutionized, a magazine exploring how innovations change our world.

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LOS ANGELES (CBS / AP) – Ask for a roast beef sandwich at an Arby’s drive-thru east of Los Angeles and you might be talking to Tori – an artificially intelligent voice assistant who takes your order and sends it to the chefs.

“It doesn’t make you sick,” says Amir Siddiqi, whose family installed the AI ​​voice at Arby’s Franchise in Ontario, California this year. “It doesn’t get a corona. And the reliability is great. “

Not only did the pandemic threaten the health of Americans when it struck the US in 2020 – it could also pose a long-term threat to many of their jobs. Faced with labor shortages and higher labor costs, companies are starting to automate jobs in the service sector that economists once considered safe, on the assumption that machines couldn’t simply make the human contact they believed customers required .

Past experience suggests that such waves of automation ultimately create more jobs than they destroy, but also disproportionately destroy less qualified jobs, on which many low-income workers are dependent. The resulting growing pains for the US economy could be severe.

Without the pandemic, Siddiqi likely would not have bothered to invest in new technology that could alienate existing employees and some customers. But it went smoothly, he says: “Basically fewer people are needed, but these people now work in the kitchen and other areas.”

Ideally, automation can convert workers into better and more interesting jobs, as long as they get the appropriate technical training, says Johannes Moenius, an economist at the University of Redlands. But while that’s happening now, it’s not going fast enough, he says.

Worse, a whole class of service jobs that were created when manufacturing began to use more automation can now be at risk. “The robots have fled the manufacturing sector and immigrated to the much larger service sector,” he says. “I thought contact jobs were safe. I was completely surprised. “

Improvements in robotic technology are allowing machines to do many tasks that used to require humans – throwing pizza dough, moving hospital linen, inspecting gauges, sorting goods. The pandemic accelerated its rollout. After all, robots cannot get sick or spread disease. They also do not require any leave of absence to deal with unexpected childcare emergencies.

CONTINUE READING: The demand for robotic chefs from companies in the Bay Area is increasing with the COVID pandemic

As KPIX reported last year, robotic food service was a trend even before the coronavirus pandemic as hospitals, campus cafeterias, and others tried to meet demand for fresh, bespoke options around the clock while keeping labor costs in To keep check. Robot chefs have performed in places like Creator, a burger joint in San Francisco, and Dal.komm coffee outlets in South Korea.

Prior to 2020, Hayward-based tech company Chowbotics had sold around 125 of its $ 35,000 robots, mostly to hospitals and colleges. Shortly after the coronavirus outbreak, sales rose more than 60%, CEO Rick Wilmer said, with growing interest from grocery stores, senior housing communities and even the U.S. Department of Defense.

International Monetary Fund economists found that past pandemics had encouraged companies to invest in machines that could increase productivity – but could also kill low-skilled jobs. “Our results suggest that concerns about the rise of robots amid the COVID-19 pandemic seem justified,” they wrote in a January newspaper.

The consequences could hit the less educated women who disproportionately fill the low- and middle-wage jobs most exposed to automation – and viral infections. These professions include salespeople, administrative assistants, cashiers and helpers in hospitals, as well as nurses and geriatric nurses.

Employers seem eager to introduce the machines. A survey by the not-for-profit World Economic Forum last year found that 43% of companies planned to reduce their workforce due to new technology. Since the second quarter of 2020, corporate investment in equipment has increased 26%, more than twice the rate of the economy as a whole.

The fastest growth is expected in roving machines that clean the floors of supermarkets, hospitals and warehouses, according to the International Federation of Robotics, a trading group. The same group also expects increased sales of robots that provide information to shoppers or deliver room service orders in hotels.

Restaurants are among the most visible robot users. At the end of August, for example, the salad chain Sweetgreen announced that it was buying the kitchen robot startup Spyce, which makes a machine that cooks vegetables and grains and pours them into bowls.

It’s not just robots either – software and AI-supported services are also on the rise. Starbucks has automated the work behind the scenes to keep track of a store’s inventory. More shops have moved to self-checkout.

Scott Lawton, CEO of the Arlington, Virginia-based restaurant chain Bartaco, struggled to get waiters to return to his restaurants last fall when they reopened during the pandemic.

So he decided to give it up. With the help of a software company, his company developed an online ordering and payment system that customers could use over their phones. Guests now simply scan a barcode in the center of each table to access a menu and order their food without having to wait for a waiter. Workers bring food and drinks to their tables. And when they finish eating, customers pay on their phone and leave.

Innovation has reduced the number of employees, but employees are not necessarily worse off. Each Bartaco location – there are 21 – now has up to eight deputy managers, roughly double the pre-pandemic total. Many are former servers and they wander between the tables to make sure everyone has what they need. They receive annual salaries of $ 55,000 or more instead of hourly wages.

Tips are now shared among all other employees, including dishwashers, which now typically make $ 20 an hour or more, far more than their pre-pandemic salary. “We don’t have the labor shortage you read about on the news,” Lawton says.

The rise in automation has not stalled a breathtaking rebound in the US labor market – at least so far.

The US economy lost a staggering 22.4 million jobs in March and April 2020 when the pandemic storm hit the US. Attitudes have since recovered rapidly: employers have brought back 17 million jobs since April 2020. In June they posted a record 10.1 million vacancies and complain that they cannot find enough workers.

Behind the hiring boom is an increase in consumer spending, many of whom have come through the crisis unexpectedly financially – thanks to both federal relief checks and, in many cases, the accumulated savings from working from home and the elimination of the daily commute.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, assumes that employers will likely be looking for workers for a long time to come.

For one thing, many Americans are taking their time to get back to work – some because they are still concerned about the health risks and childcare issues posed by COVID-19, others because of the generous federal unemployment benefits that came out on September 6th nationwide expires.

In addition, many baby boom workers are retiring. “The job market will be very, very tight for the foreseeable future,” says Zandi.

Currently, the short-term benefits of economic snapback outweigh any job losses from automation, the effects of which are gradually becoming apparent over a period of years. That can’t last. Last year, researchers from the University of Zurich and the University of British Columbia found that the so-called unemployment rallies of the past 35 years, in which economic output recovered from the recession faster than employment, could be explained by the loss of automation-vulnerable jobs .

Despite strong hires since the middle of last year, the US economy is still missing 5.3 million jobs compared to February 2020. And Lydia Boussour, senior US economist at Oxford Economics, calculated last month that 40% of the missing jobs are vulnerable to automation, especially in food preparation, retail and manufacturing.

Some economists fear that automation will push workers into lower-paying positions. Daron Acemoglu, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University estimated in June that up to 70% of the stagnation in US wages between 1980 and 2016 could be explained by machines replacing humans in routine tasks.

“Many of the jobs that are being automated were in the middle of the skill distribution,” says Acemoglu. “They no longer exist and the workers who used to do them are now doing less skilled jobs.”

© Copyright 2021 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All rights reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report

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