Automatic estimation of clothing insulation rate and metabolic rate for dynamic thermal comfort assessment

Clothing Insulation Rate and Metabolic Rate Estimation for Individual Thermal Comfort Assessment in Real Life

“…When estimating both I cl and M, refs. [34,35] use a CNN (Convolutional Neural Network)-based classifier to recognize a person's clothes type and activity type, and then refer ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standard tables to get the I cl and M values from the recognized types. These works prove the importance of clothing status (short sleeves, long sleeves) and posture (sitting, standing) in estimating I cl and M. However, refs.…”

“…These works prove the importance of clothing status (short sleeves, long sleeves) and posture (sitting, standing) in estimating I cl and M. However, refs. [34,35] are only valid in a simple and controlled single-person environment. Expanding and enriching this kind of solution is in great need.…”

“…To integrate clothing status and key posture recognition into this detection procedure, we classify persons into six categories (see Table 3). Here the clothing status is represented by the sleeve status (long, short) for three reasons: (i) these two are the most common clothing situations in an office environment while the lower part of the body is often totally occluded by the desk; (ii) according to to [10,34,35], sleeve status is significantly important in estimating I cl ; (iii) the change between a long-sleeved status to a short-sleeved status by rolling up sleeves or taking off outer jackets is a sign of feeling hot and vice versa, indicating a person's thermal sensation directly; (iv) the sleeves status helps to locate skin region and clothes region separately for further skin and clothes temperatures acquisition. For example, the elbows of a person wearing short-sleeved clothes are skin regions, while the elbows of a person wearing long-sleeved clothes are clothes regions.…”

“…For example, the elbows of a person wearing short-sleeved clothes are skin regions, while the elbows of a person wearing long-sleeved clothes are clothes regions. This localization makes it possible to use such key body points to calculate a person's skin temperature and clothes temperature, because key body points on arms are widely used sensitive heat receptors in thermal comfort assessment [35,[54][55][56]. Besides the two statuses of long sleeves and short sleeves, another status called difficult to predict clothes type due to occlusion is also usual in daily life.…”

“…After considering such situations, this research counts the lower arms (the middle point of the elbow and wrist) for short-sleeved clothes and the nose area as R s , and the elbows for long-sleeved clothes and the shoulders as R c . These regions are also widely used heat receptors in thermal comfort research [35,[54][55][56]. Figure 3 illustrates R s in green crosses and R c in red crosses on four images.…”