Human-building interaction for indoor environmental control: Evolution of technology and future prospects

Abstract

This paper presents a data-driven literature review of human-building interaction (HBI), which refers to the interaction between occupants and buildings. Through natural language processing-based text classification, the paper analyzed 907 literature sources and derived four research topics: automatic climate controller, automatic lighting controller, automatic window opener, and artificial intelligence. A meta-analysis was conducted to explore these topics from early to state-of-the-art technology. The meta-analysis revealed challenges and opportunities from the sensing, predicting, and control perspectives. Finally, the paper proposes future prospects to overcome these challenges, including increasing self-awareness in the environment, using multimodal sentimental feedback control, utilizing online and meta-learning, promoting collective control, and building infrastructure for field implementation. Eventually, HBI can also enhance the occupants' well-being by generating a more optimal indoor environment. In addition, the integration of advanced artificial intelligence can improve decision-making processes and increase the overall performance of automatic controllers.