Automatic Body Temperature System

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Many houses nowadays have smart home controls, a very popular instrument of which is the home smart thermostat, which basically remembers the user's manual settings adjustments for every time zone throughout the day. Over a period of multiple days, the smart thermostat remembers the various settings changes done manually by the user and creates the normal settings for that particular house and user.

The inventor is an AC technician and installer and has been working in the AC industry for years. His invention is about a device that will be attached to the user's body, say his wrist for instance as a bracelet like any smart watch. The device will have sensors to read body conditions such as temperatures and humidity and ambient conditions such as the air temperature. Based on these readings and some feedback from the user to determine the user's comfortable settings, the device sends signals to the smart house thermostat to automatically and dynamically adjust the AC settings all day long especially during the sleep time.

Further to its basic function of automatic adjustment of the thermostat settings, this invention device could be worn by multiple users in one house, where each room temperature is adjusted based on the body temperature of the user in that room. Temperature adjustment at the room level instead of the whole house is achieved by controlling the air flow on each room vent separately by means of mechanical damper.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

This invention is about a wearable device that is equipped to send automatic signals to adjust the parameters settings of electronic home devices and equipment, such as the thermostat of the air conditioning unit to comfortable levels as desired by the user. This automatic adjustment is activated based on the constant reading of the user's body temperature and the ambient air temperature, and determining if the user is comfortable or not. These could happen during sleep time, exercise time, or any other indoor activities. The adjustment could be sent to the air conditioning unit, at the jacuzzi or spa, shower temp control, or any other smart home automation systems.

A typical application of this system is the air conditioning settings at home while the user is asleep. The system continuously monitors the user's body conditions including temperature and skin moisture during sleep time and determines if the ambient air temperature is not comfortable (either too high or too low). This determination is achieved through artificial intelligence algorithm which considers the current readings of both the body and the ambient conditions, as well as the comfort levels learned as feedback from the user.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 shows the overall architecture of the Automatic Body Temperature System.

FIG. 2 shows a top view of the Automatic Body Temperature System.

FIG. 3 shows a flow chart of the Automatic Body Temperature System.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

FIG. 1 shows the overall architecture of the Automatic Body Temperature System 100. It is basically a self-contained wearable device 110, which looks like a wristwatch and worn 24/7.

The device 110, from the outside, has band handles 111 and user's touch switches 112. The band handles are to provide means to attach the device 110 to the user body by means of straps or wrist bands. The user's touch switches 112 are used by the user to give feed back to the system as to adjust the temperature up or down. To avoid accidental adjustments, the system will take the feedback from the buttons only in certain patterns, which is touching one touch switch for one second and then sweep the finger to the other touch switch. Any other random touching of these two switches 112 will be ignored.

The device 110, from the inside, is composed of the main controller 120, the ambient temperature sensor 121, the body temperature sensor 122, the humidity sensor 123, the WiFi/Bluetooth communication module 125, and the user replaceable long-life battery 113.

Also shown in FIG. 1 is the smart home AC thermostat 130 with its display 131, which is a third-party device that controls the AC system in the user's home. It is relevant to the invention device 110 in that the device 110 sends adjustments signals to it through its WiFi/Bluetooth module 145.

The upper portion of FIG. 2 shows the invention device 110 from the outside with its touch switches 112, and without its internal guts. The lower portion of the Figure shows two possible applications of the invention, one where the user 250 wearing the device 110 while exercising on the treadmill 251, and the other where the user 260 wearing the device 110 while sleeping in the bed 261.

FIG. 3 shows a high-level operational flowchart 300 of the invention device 110. The device 110 once turned on, it runs an infinite loop 310, which is basically reading the body and ambient temperature constantly 320 and if there is any user input 330 to adjust the temp by means of the touch switches 112, the device 110 will send the adjustment request 331 based on the user input to the thermostat 130, via the means of WiFi or Bluetooth modules 125 and 145.

If there is no user's input 330, the device 110 will compare the current body temperature with the normal body temperature 340 as stored in the user's history at this time of the day. If it is consistent 340, then no action is taken and the device 110 returns to its infinite loop 320.

If the current body temperature is not consistent with the user's normal body temperature 340, the device 110 will compare the current ambient temperature with the normal ambient temperature 350 as stored in the user's history at this time of the day. If it is not consistent 350, the device 110 will send the adjustment request 351 based on the body/ambient temp to the thermostat 130, via the means of WiFi or Bluetooth modules 125 and 145.

If the current ambient temperature is consistent with the normal ambient temperature 350, the device 110 will assume that the user is not comfortable due to some abnormal conditions and it computes an incremental change in the settings and send these changes 352 to the smart home thermostat, and returns to the infinite loop 320, which repeats the overall operations over and over. As long as the body temp is inconsistent with the norm while the ambient temp is still consistent with the norm, the device 110 will keep incrementally adjusting the settings on temporary bases. This automatic incremental adjustment continues until the user overrides the settings by users input.

This Automatic Body Temperature Device is basically a self-contained wearable device, which is worn by the user just like a wristwatch except it is worn 24/7, and the device battery is replaced every few months.

The user in a typical home with a smart thermostat would adjust the temperature settings throughout the various zones each day for a whole week. Over time, the smart thermostat remembers the user's settings and keeps them currently active. With this invention, the user continues to be able to adjust the smart thermostat settings manually as normal, but in addition this device can also adjust the setting automatically, which is very convenient during the sleep time. Moreover, occasionally the user feels uncomfortable or different from his normal days. Such different occasional feelings manifest as a sudden drop or rise of the user's body temperature due to various reasons such as not feeling well, too tired, drinking hot or cold beverages, exercising at random times, not being in the mood, while the ambient temperature is still within the normal settings. In these irregular situations, which are not known to the smart home thermostat, no permanent adjustments should be made to the normal settings, instead some temporary adjustment can be imposed until these irregular situations (abnormal feelings)no longer exist.

In these irregular situations, if the thermostat setting is adjusted by the user, the normal setting will be temporarily skewed, and the next day at that time zone, the original normal settings must be restored. To avoid messing up with the normal settings, the device of this invention detects those irregular conditions by observing the body temperature being inconsistent of the normal settings while the ambient temperature is consistent with the normal settings. And in this case the device will send commands to the thermostat to temporarily adjust the settings, and as the irregular conditions diminish over time the device will adjust the setting back to the norm.

For example, a user sets the home thermostat to 77 F during sleep time. The user sleeps every night comfortably without any setting adjustments. The smart thermostat keeps the normal settings as long as the user does not make any manual changes. At the same time, the invention's AI algorithm learns over time that this setting of 77 F is OK for the user while he is asleep. Also, it learns and records that his body temperature has been normally at 82 F during his comfortable sleep time. One night and for whatever reason, the user body temperature went up to 85 F making the user temporarily uncomfortable and feeling too hot. The device will automatically lower settings of the smart thermostat incrementally, and the user body temperature drops to a comfortable level. Say it is now 83 F and the user is now comfortable. The AI algorithm of this invention monitors and records the temperature readings continuously for dynamic analysis. The algorithm now just learned that body temperature during sleep is OK when it is 82 F (of course with a certain tolerance, say +/−5%) while the ambient temperature is 77 F. But when the body temperature went up to 85 F, the AI algorithm of the invention automatically sends a signal to the smart home thermostat to adjust the settings incrementally, say from 77 F to 76 F. This adjustment, however, must be temporary while the user body temperature is still at 85 F, and once it goes back to normal at 83 F, another signal will be sent out to the smart home thermostat to bring the setting back to normal at 77 F. This temporary adjustment from 77 F to 76 F and back to 77 F will not be factored into the smart home thermostat automatic setting because it was based on temporary and abnormal body condition of the user, which were not even seen by the smart home thermostat. Such temporary automatic settings adjustments can also be manually imposed by the user via the touch switches on the device, by sweeping his finger on them either up or down.

The overall operational algorithm of the invention is summarized by the flow chart of FIG. 3, where all actions are summarized in the FIG. 3 description.