Method and apparatus for environmental sensing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing environmental sensing systems lack the ability to provide contextual information for alarm conditions, often resulting in premature or false alarms, and fail to predict when environmental parameters are likely to exceed desired limits.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that utilize multiple environmental sensors to monitor and analyze data, determining the context of anomalous readings and providing alerts only when the context is not consistent with typical activities, while also predicting when thresholds are likely to be exceeded.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a single environmental sensor is used to monitor parameters, then the system is simple and cost-effective, but it cannot provide contextual information to distinguish false alarms from true alarms
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple environmental sensors (temperature, humidity, light, motion) into a single monitoring system that collectively provides contextual information. By merging data from these different sensor types, the system can distinguish between false alarms (e.g., temperature fluctuation due to door opening detected by motion sensor) and true alarms, thereby improving alarm accuracy without proportionally increasing system complexity
Solution Approach 2:
The monitoring system is designed to perform multiple functions: it not only detects environmental parameters but also analyzes their interrelationships to determine alarm context. The system universally monitors multiple parameters simultaneously and uses this multi-functional capability to improve the reliability of alarm conditions by cross-referencing data from different sensor types
2Reliability
If alarm thresholds are set to be sensitive, then true alarms are detected early, but false alarms and premature alarms increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses feedback from multiple sensors to continuously evaluate the context of threshold violations. When a sensor detects a threshold crossing, the system immediately queries other sensors for contextual information (e.g., was there motion? did light levels change?). This feedback mechanism allows the system to maintain sensitive thresholds while filtering out false alarms by verifying whether the threshold crossing is consistent with the environmental context provided by other sensors
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary analysis of environmental context before triggering an alarm. By evaluating data from multiple sensors in advance and determining whether a threshold crossing is likely to be a false alarm, the system takes preliminary action to prevent premature alarm notifications, thereby reducing the time lost to false alarms while maintaining early detection capability
3Reliability
If multiple environmental sensors are deployed to provide contextual information, then false alarms are reduced, but system cost and complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the alarm verification function across multiple independent sensors, each monitoring a specific environmental parameter. This segmentation allows the system to distribute the complexity: each sensor remains relatively simple, but their combined data provides comprehensive contextual information for verifying alarm conditions, thereby improving reliability without requiring any single component to be overly complex
Data Source
AI summary
A method for verifying an alarm condition in an environmental sensing system includes monitoring data received from environmental sensors; detecting anomalous data received from one of the plurality of environmental sensors; determining the context in which the anomalous data was acquired is consistent with typical usage activities; and providing an alarm condition alert when the determined context is not consistent with typical activities. A system for intelligently monitoring environmental conditions includes environmental sensors configured to monitor first and second environmental conditions and to communicate with an intelligent analysis module. The intelligent analysis module is configured with logic to determine whether anomalous data has been collected by the environmental sensors, to determine the context in which the anomalous data was collected, to determine whether the anomalous data can be attributed to a routine activity, and to provide an alarm condition if the anomalous data cannot be attributed to a routine activity.