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Nonparametric user activity modelling and prediction

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Abstract

Modelling the occupancy of buildings, rooms or the usage of machines has many applications in varying fields, exemplified by the fairly recent emergence of smart, self-learning thermostats. Typically, the aim of such systems is to provide insight into user behaviour and incentivise energy savings or to automatically reduce consumption while maintaining user comfort. This paper presents a nonparametric user activity modelling algorithm, i.e. a Dirichlet process mixture model implemented by Gibbs sampling and the stick-breaking process, to infer the underlying patterns in user behaviour from the data. The technique deals with multiple activities, such as <present, absent, sleeping>, of multiple users. Furthermore, it can also be used for modelling and predicting appliance usage (e.g. <on, standby, off>). The algorithm is evaluated, both on cluster validity and predictive performance, using three case studies of varying complexity. The obtained results indicate that the method is able to properly assign the activity data into well-defined clusters. Moreover, the high prediction accuracy demonstrates that these clusters can be exploited to anticipate future behaviour, facilitating the development of intelligent building management systems.

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Notes

  1. As some activities, such as eating, occur multiple times per day, scarceness could possibly be attributed to sensor failures or missing annotations. However, given it is an external data set, this could not be investigated. Additionally, these activities are typically very short and since the data are segmented into 15-min time slots, for which only one activity can be in effect (the one that was started the last in that time slot), some occurrences might be lost.

  2. http://www-sop.inria.fr/members/Francois.Bremond/topicsText/gerhomeProject.html.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to recognise the financial support from Flanders Innovation and Entrepreneurship (VLAIO).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, KU Leuven - Flanders Make, Celestijnenlaan 300, 3001, Leuven, Belgium

    Yannick De Bock, Andres Auquilla & Joost R. Duflou

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Cuenca, Cuenca, Ecuador

    Andres Auquilla

  3. Computational Modeling Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, Brussels, Belgium

    Ann Nowé

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  1. Yannick De Bock
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De Bock, Y., Auquilla, A., Nowé, A. et al. Nonparametric user activity modelling and prediction. User Model User-Adap Inter 30, 803–831 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11257-020-09259-3

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