Thermal Preference Prediction Through Infrared Thermography Technology: Recognizing Adaptive Behaviors

The recognition of thermal adaptation behaviors is a crucial and noninvasive method for accurately and swiftly predicting the thermal preferences of occupants. This is instrumental in enhancing the energy efficiency, indoor personnel comfort, and overall productivity of office buildings. This study employed deep-learning models to analyze a thermal adaptive behavior video dataset captured by Infrared thermography (IRT) cameras to predict the thermal preferences of occupants. A large-scale infrared thermography dataset was developed for recognizing thermal adaptive behaviors using 9,650 video samples. Two adaptive behavior recognition models for infrared videos were developed by leveraging neural network models: Two-Stream Inflated 3D ConvNet (I3D) and SlowFast (SF) networks. These models achieved the average prediction accuracies of 83.53% and 88.56%, respectively. Notably, both models exhibited a recognition time of milliseconds, facilitating the real-time recognition of thermal adaptive behaviors. This study offers vital technical and theoretical underpinnings for developing decision-making solutions for smart buildings based on noninvasive thermal preference prediction.