AN AUTOMOBILE HEATING, VENTILATING AND AIR-CONDITIONING (HVAC) SYSTEMWITH A NEURAL-NETWORK FOR CONTROLLING THE THERMAL SENSATIONS FELT BY A PASSENGER

The purpose of this study is to develop a heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) system for automobiles which can control the inte rior environment according to thermal sensations felt by humans and to evaluate the effectiveness of this HVAC system. The facial skin tempe rature of a passenger was estimated from environmental information, th at is air temperature, wind velocity, etc., with a neural network, and the thermal sensation felt by the passenger was calculated from the f acial skin temperature. Thus, this HVAC system can estimate the therma l sensation level without the direct measurement of passenger's skin t emperature. The passenger's facial skin temperatures calculated by the neural network were stored in a memory IC, and the memory IC was buil t into the automobile. When the NN was used for retrieving the facial skin temperature of a passenger, the stored result was provided by the memory IC. This HVAC system was capable of controlling the interior e nvironment according to the thermal sensation of the passenger, thus m aintaining the passenger's level of comfort. The passenger was more co mfortable with our HVAC system than with the conventional automobile a ir conditioner, in particular, just after the passenger gets into the automobile. When driving the automobile on the road, this HVAC system also controls the interior environment to maintain the comfort level o f the passenger.