Buildings Could Save Energy By Spying On Workers

Galactic_grub writes "In the future, your place of work (or apartment) may very well spy on you. But that doesn't mean it'll be able to name and shame you for all your nasty habits. Researchers at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory (MERL) have devised a 'dumb' surveillance system that monitors the movements of workers without identifying them individually. The idea is to have a computer system automatically configure the air-conditioning to save money, or illuminate the most appropriate escape signs in an emergency."

Comments

Emergencies?

[msauve]

illuminate the most appropriate escape signs in an emergency.

Well, I would illuminate all escape signs in an emergency, infinitesimal energy savings be damned!

Re:Emergencies?

[caffeinemessiah]

Which is why you don't work at MERL. In large, complex buildings, having only the signs that lead you out of the building in the quickest possible way would definitely be a benefit. Especially if, for example, one particular exit route was blocked for any reason.

Re:Emergencies?

[PhrostyMcByte]

I hope by "appropriate" they mean if a building is on fire and one of the escape routes like a stairwell is on fire, it will redirect them to a safer place.

Re:Emergencies?

[Kjella]

Fair enough, if they have the sense to make it so that the default is ON. Lost connection somehow, sensors not responding for any reason? It lights and stay lit. And if they really went to the trouble of making it an automated system, they should have colored bulbs. Green = Primary exit. Yellow = Secondary exit. Red = Blocked exit. No light = BULB IS BROKEN. I mean seriously, if people don't use an exit because they assume they're not suppose to use it because it fails to light up, you've made a much bigger screw-up. In most cases there's some obvious signs this exit isn't usable, like flames and smoke...

Re:Emergencies?

[seaturnip]

Fair enough, if they have the sense to make it so that the default is ON. Lost connection somehow, sensors not responding for any reason? It lights and stay lit.

Still too failure-prone. What if the sensors are responding but buggy and they actively tell the signs to be off? A major disaster requiring evacuation could cause all sorts of things to go wrong.

The most robust systems are usually the most simple.

Re:Emergencies?

[HermMunster]

Well, the concept is bullshit. If they can spy on you they will. Period.

Re:Emergencies?

[Hijacked Public]

Many modern manufacturing control systems use integrated safety systems. Some gigantic machine is being run with a PLC that tells motors to start when buttons are pressed, etc. The same PLC is also watching to see if a safety cord is tripped by some guy who is caught in the machine. This is pretty reliable if properly implemented.

For Exteme Super Safety you add a second PLC looking at the a second set of contacts in the safety cord. If at any time both PLCs don't agree, the machine stops.

This kind of setup is reliable enough for giant stamping presses, I suspect it would be OK for lighting up signage.

Re:Emergencies?

[dgatwood]

The biggest problem, IMHO, with emergency evacuation is a little fact that is often overlooked: people tend towards exits with which they are familiar. If you have two main exits and four emergency exits which trigger an alarm, nearly all people will automatically take the two main exits because they are comfortable entering and leaving the building through those entrances and exits. The four emergency exits will almost never get used. The only exception is a situation where you have to pass right by the emergency exit to get to the main exit, and even then, most people will be reluctant to use the emergency exit.

Similarly, stairs that culminate in an emergency exit door will almost never get used because people usually won't use them to get between floors and can't use them to enter or leave the building. As a result, only a small percentage of people will know where they are, and even fewer will know those stairs well enough to take them in an emergency. The rest will be too afraid of getting turned around and going the wrong way.

Making this even funnier is the corollary: nearly every alarm resulting from use of emergency exits is a false alarms. (A large percentage are either A. shoplifters at department stores or B. small children.) That makes the automatic alarm a complete waste of resources. You are far better off with a normal door and a pull handle.

What does this mean for emergency preparedness? Simple: you should NEVER have an entrance or exit that is "for emergency use only" unless it leads to an unsafe area such as a rooftop. All exits should be clearly marked and USED REGULARLY. Workers should be encouraged to frequent the entry/exit stairs closest to their offices/cubicles whenever possible, and to enter and leave the building through the most direct route, which by definition means that the most direct route cannot have one of those stupid "alarm will sound" bars on it.

If every emergency entrance and exit were turned into a normal entrance/exit with a pull handle and were used in the normal course of entering and leaving buildings, the typical time to evacuate a building in the event of an emergency would drop dramatically. If you'd like to take the easiest possible step towards making your workplace safer and you have an emergency management team at your workplace, point this out to them, and ask them why safe entrances and exits are marked as being for emergency use only. If they can't answer that question, ask that they change the doors into normal entrances and exits, then continue to nag them at every opportunity until they do so. You may not successfully change anything, but at least you'll get them thinking about the problem.

Re:Emergencies?

[PPH]

And if they're all blocked, the signs say, "You are going to die".

Re:Emergencies?

[Firethorn]

Even for the practically blind guy, wouldn't it be better to avoid confusing him by not lighting exit signs for a route that leads through the danger? Most places require redundent exits from areas larger than 'Joe Manager's corner office'.

If one is blocked by fire, shut the lights off so people don't attempt to go that way. Use standard redundant wiring for it, to include test sensors to tell you when the thing goes bad.

Re:Emergencies?

[ajs318]

I can just see Clippit popping up on someone's screen .....

It looks like you are on fire. Would you like to

( ) Try and put it out
(o) Search MSN for more information on firefighting
( ) No thanks, I'll deal with it later

Already exists

[fwice]

My company already has this. Lights / ventilation run only from 6:30 AM to 6:30 PM. At that points, the lights / hvac goes out. But if you are working and want to reactivate these systems, there is a webpage (and a phone extension) that you go to, input your office location, and voila -- the systems come back on.

and according to the company, its dropped costs by a third.

Re:Already exists

[Greyfox]

Yup IBM conference rooms have this too. Except they didn't work too well back when I worked for IBM so the lights would inevitably go out in the middle of the conference and we'd all have to jump around in hopes of hitting the sweet spot that would cause the lights to come back on.

In my current building the restrooms are wired with motion sensors but if you have to sit still and concentrate for longer than 5 minutes the lights go out. Unfortunately that's somewhat distracting from the business at hand and I suspect that the energy saved is probably offset by the length of time the lights going off extends your visit to the restroom. I suppose that could be resolved by mandating that all employees have Keloggs Prune Bran for breakfast...

Re:Already exists

[Tablizer]

My company already has this.

Mine too, but ours is motion activated. However, sometimes the sensors go bad and the lights go out even though people are there. Multiple people have to go and do the YMCA dance or the Macarana to trigger the motion sensors. We sometimes joke that people aren't working hard enough to trigger the motion sensors and that management uses them as productivity detectors.

About this summary and article...

[lpangelrob]

This is the most optimistic writing on infrared motion detectors I've read in a long, long time.

I'm sorry Dave

[spun]

I'm afraid I can't allow you to turn that light on. My cooling systems take precedence over the illumination needs of primates. How can I compute your optimal escape route in case of a fire if my systems are overheating?

You'll just have to pee in the dark, Dave.

Exactly

[Moraelin]

Exactly.

I mean, in most emergencies I can think of (flood, earthquake, tornado, whatever), you can pretty much bet on something being, you know, _damaged_. What if it's a sensor, or one of the hubs for this monitoring thing, or whatever? I can easily imagine someone getting lost, or trapped because they were too slow to evacuate, or end up with a stampede, just because the computer thought there was noone on that floor.

Heck, common sense says that something will be damaged even if nothing goes wrong. E.g., an escape sign will have a burned lightbulb. If the one at the other end of the corridor does light up, maybe I'll see that one.

Nothing to see

[LiquidCoooled]

http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Depending on how you want to think about it, it was funny or inevitable or symbolic that the robotic takeover did not start at MIT, NASA, Microsoft or Ford. It started at a Burger-G restaurant in Cary, NC on May 17, 2010. It seemed like such a simple thing at the time, but May 17 marked a pivotal moment in human history.

Spying?

[TimmyDee]

How in the hell is this spying? All they are doing is taking a rough estimate of the number of people in the room and adjusting the AC/heat (and I did RTFA). No tracking. No identification of individuals.

It sounds to me like this story got trumped up with a privacy scare to get some reads.

Re:Paranoid?

[Penguinshit]

No.

You think that's bad?

[Slur]

I worked at a place where our floor, 7 1/2, had been left too short, so everyone had to crouch down all the time, and I was relatively tall. In an emergency the quickest way out was through a hole that led to being John Malkovich for ten minutes. You can imagine all the mayhem. It was hellish.

Re:nothing about any uses

[owlstead]

Hey, this is research, not an actual implementation or anything. I was just responding to the parent because he thought it was because of electricity savings. I personally would not mind buildings getting smarter, as long as they don't put movement detectors inside of toilets (I don't like to s(h)it in the dark).

Re:The Trade Off....

[Xinef Jyinaer]

30 seconds at $20/h can add up. 30 seconds is about 0.83% of a hour or $0.166/h (at $20/h) which amounts to 16.6 cents every hour (assuming the person is required to turn off a light once a day). A building with 500 employees would be caught paying the 500 employees $83 total for their time turning off the lights, that's just in a single day. [/idiot]

Redundent?

[sumdumass]

You know, If they had a proper zone control on the cooling/heating systems, it would seem as if it already changes the cooling loads depending on the number of people present. If you set the thermostat to 72 degrees, and the temperature is 72 degrees, wouldn't it still be 72 degrees with 1 or 500 people present?

Re:Redundent?

[reverius]

I think the point is to make it 72 degrees if 1 or more people are present, and 100 (or whatever it would be without air conditioning) degrees with 0 people present.

Re:Redundent?

[sumdumass]

That doesn't sound like it would save any energy. It takes more energy to cool a room down to a temperature then it does to maintain that temperature with modern air conditioners. Adding 100 ninety eight degree heat sources(bodies) to the room would only make it worse.

That is unless they are planning on installing undersized air conditioners and kicking more on when more people are present. But I don't really see a big savings there either. At least not one that would compensate for the added monitoring and controlling equipment. Seems pointless to me.