Human-building collaboration: a case study on lighting enabled collaborative system design

Abstract

Building automation systems have gained increased attention by means of their ability to improve building performance. They increasingly rely on cutting-edge technologies, sensors, and the Internet of Things to autonomously detect changes and adapt to their surroundings. Consequently, contemporary lighting systems have similarly evolved into context-aware entities that react to occupant motion or changes in ambient lighting, acknowledge user preferences, and personalize lighting solutions. This trend requires that lighting designers incorporate into their design logic ideas of automation, dynamic controls, and user-system interaction. Previous investigations have explored the design of interactive, adaptive, and self-optimizable lighting systems. They have also addressed matters of spectrally tuning lighting using numerical optimization techniques and have formulated design considerations for interactive lighting. Nonetheless, holistic methodologies for designing intelligent systems and comprehensive guidelines for assembling system components are scarce. In an attempt to further the profession of lighting design and help designers navigate the shift from conventional to interactive lighting design practices, in this doctoral dissertation a holistic computational framework is proposed that cohesively addresses the design and evaluation of digitally programmable lighting systems. Specifically, this dissertation establishes: (a) a computational framework for designing systems that sculpt light, delivering activity tailored illumination where and when needed, (b) the levels of user-system interaction that may be attained as well as the minimum hardware requirements to accommodate them, (c) a method for evaluating the resulting systems virtually (real-time & offline simulations) and physically (hardware, testbed), and (d) a simulation platform developed in a gaming engine to accommodate real-time lighting simulations. In addition, it presents (e) three implementations that demonstrate how the framework may be applied to synthesize systems that comply with each of the discussed levels of interaction and (f) two additional implementations that demonstrate how the framework may be universally applied in any space and with any digitally programmable lighting hardware. The results of the study suggest significant potential for improving system performance and autonomy as well as user experience and wellbeing in scenarios requiring task-specific and context-adaptive lighting. The associated affordances and limitations are discussed considering existing interactive and autonomous system design frameworks.