Personalized Outdoor Comfort System Using User and Environmental Data
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for determining outdoor comfort are not personalized and fail to adapt to individual physiological and psychological variations, relying primarily on atmospheric data and being limited in their applicability to specific temperature ranges, which results in inaccurate comfort assessments.
Innovation Solution
A system comprising a mobile device and a computing device that collects user-specific characteristics and environmental parameters, including land surface information, to provide personalized outdoor comfort determinations, leveraging past and predicted weather patterns, and allowing for user feedback to refine comfort profiles.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If personalized parameters (physiological and psychological) are incorporated into comfort determination, then measurement precision and reliability improve, but device complexity and data processing requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments comfort determination into multiple independent modules: environmental parameter collection (atmospheric data), personal parameter collection (physiological and psychological characteristics), comfort profile generation, and comfort level calculation. Each module operates independently but contributes to the overall personalized comfort assessment, resolving the contradiction by organizing complexity into manageable segments while maintaining high precision.
Solution Approach 2:
The system transforms the comfort determination process from using only atmospheric parameters to incorporating multiple parameter types including physiological parameters (age, weight, body composition), psychological parameters (comfort preferences, sensitivity), and environmental parameters. This parameter expansion enables personalized precision while the modular architecture manages the resulting complexity.
2Device complexity
If only atmospheric data is used for comfort determination, then device complexity remains low, but measurement precision and personalization capability deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements a universal comfort determination framework that can process multiple data types (atmospheric, physiological, psychological) through a single integrated model. The comfort profile generation module universally handles different parameter combinations, allowing the system to maintain relative simplicity while achieving high precision through multi-functional data processing.
3Ease of operation
If previous comfort indices are used without personalization, then ease of operation is maintained, but adaptability to individual variations deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary action by pre-collecting and storing personal characteristics (physiological and psychological parameters) to generate an individualized comfort profile before actual comfort determination is needed. This pre-processing enables the system to quickly provide personalized comfort assessments without requiring complex real-time calculations, thus maintaining ease of operation while achieving high adaptability.
Solution Approach 2:
The system incorporates feedback mechanisms where comfort assessments and user responses are continuously used to refine and update personal comfort profiles. This feedback loop enables the system to adapt to individual variations over time while maintaining a simple user interface, resolving the contradiction between ease of operation and personalization capability.
Data Source
AI summary
Devices and systems for determining personal outdoor comfort are described herein. One device includes instructions executable to receive inputs corresponding to characteristics of a user associated with a mobile device, determine a location of the mobile device, communicate an indication of the characteristics and the determined location to a computing device, and receive an outdoor comfort determination from the computing device, wherein the outdoor comfort determination is particular to the user based on the characteristics of the user and particular to the location of the mobile device based on a plurality of environmental parameters associated with the location of the mobile device.