US DoE to fund plenoptic light sensing project
Joint academic/industry partnership to develop low cost sensor platform for counting, locating and tracking occupants in commercial buildings
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's LESA (Light Enabled Systems and Applications) team and University of New Mexico in collaboration with industry partner ABB will receive a $2.375M award from the US Department of Energy to develop LESA's plenoptic light sensing technology.
It is part of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) Saving Energy Nationwide in Structures with Occupancy Recognition (SENSOR) program.
The 36 month program is to develop a low cost, highly accurate sensor platform for counting, locating and tracking occupants in any commercial buildings. The occupancy information can then be used to reduce building HVAC energy costs by up to 30 percent.
This program will advance LESA's work in time of flight (TOF) occupancy sensing by integrating its advanced receiver designs developed under its visible light communications program with patented plenoptic light field sensing developed by LESA's academic partner, the University of New Mexico.
