Design of a decentralized measurement and control technology concept for building services in the context of the Internet of Things

The measurement and control technology in buildings usually is managed centrally based on superordinate parameters (Top-down-management) and is mostly unsatisfactory for the user in terms of functionality and interaction. The management of the building technology mainly does not adapt to the user and follows its rigid rules. Additionally these rules are often complicated, inflexible and unable to exploit the energy saving potentials.

Objective of the research project
The hypothesis of the research project is to exploit the energy-saving potential by decentralized control strategies of the building technology by means of direct, decentralized networking of the building services components by involving the user.
The aim is to examine, on a conceptual level, how and to what extent such decentralized management is technically feasible and what potential for improvement is possible. In addition to the investigation of the climatic context, the focus is on the development of a prototypical application for controlling selected relevant climatic factors. Finally the integration of the application takes place in a predefined demonstrator room, which is located at the campus of Robert Bosch GmbH in Renningen.

Concept
Access to the control of the decentralized building technology should be generally controlled via a smartphone application. In other words, the user interacts with a smart device that is connected via W-LAN to a database in which the settings desired by the user are stored. This database is connected to the building technology via further interfaces, which finally executes the desired control commands and controls the respective decentralized components.

The application includes the following functions:

  • Authentication (user authorization)
  • Localization (zone assignment of the user)
  • Operation mode (degree of influence of the user)


After the authentication and localization of the user, the application assigns a specific operating mode. In the "single-mode", the user is authorized to control independently the system and to adapt the conditions to his individual, personal comfort requirements. If the user leaves the room (zone), the system switches to a predefined basic state (default values). In the "multi-mode", it is no longer entirely possible for the individual user to set individual settings on its own. This means that the application adapts the personal settings of each user within a common room (zone) and determines a weighted compromise value per occupancy zone, which is passed on to the building technology.