SUST(AI)N: Smart building based on AI processing

Currently, buildings are becoming smart organisms due to a wide range of distributed sensors and software programmes that provide them with a certain degree of intelligence. In this context, SUST(AI)N (Smart Building Sensitive to Daily Sentiment) emerged. Participants in this project include researchers from the Instrumentation, Sensors and Interfaces Group (ISI) and the Components and Systems for Communications Research Group (CSC) at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC). 

SUST(AI)N will enable the development of theoretical and experimental principles to combine distributed artificial intelligence, greater precision in the environmental detection of people (location and tracking, gesture recognition and vital signs such as breathing and heart rate), and increased flexibility and efficiency in the implementation of reconfigurable hardware, in the framework of a smart building as a conscious organism, which will achieve self-awareness through probabilistic reasoning by integrating people with the various connected devices and sustainable systems.

The consortium of the project will simplify the hardware and smart building systems by exploiting electromagnetic signals jointly for backscatter communication, energy harvesting, physical-layer computation offloading, and non-intrusive sensing. Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces are used to support each of these functions. This new smart system will help tertiary buildings (used by public services, companies and organisations) to meet regulatory degree 2010/31/EU of the European Parliament, which requires systems to control automation by 2025.

The research team from the ISI group and the CSC at the UPC, will be responsible for powering the sensor nodes using energy harvested from the surroundings, specifically from three sources that are present inside buildings: light energy, thermal energy and radiofrequency energy. Light energy will come from artificial lighting (LED, fluorescent tubes) and natural lighting (windows, transparent doors). Thermal energy will be captured from the heating and air conditioning system, specifically from the pipes that distribute hot/cold water. Radiofrequency energy will be obtained from that present in the environment and that emitted by the radio transmitters that are already used for communications and sensors. In addition, for the three types of energy harvesters, electronic systems will be developed to maximise the harvested power.