SBIR Phase II:An IoT Smart Shower for Hotel Utility Savings

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to save over $50 billion in building utility costs annually across the U.S. by saving 200 billion gallons of water and 1 trillion kWh of energy. Reducing the overall water and energy demand decreases the strain on municipal infrastructure. The proposed project consists of a highly accurate method to generate valuable utility end-user behavior data in hot, humid environments. Public and private organizations can use the data to design better policies and best practices. Moreover, the occupancy detection technology can be used for other applications where difficult ambient conditions prevent the use of conventional sensors. In addition to the economic and environmental benefits to the user, the business will create engineering, sales, and customer support jobs. The proposed project will eliminate behavioral water waste occurring when a bather leaves a shower unoccupied even after water warm-up. Project objectives include development of: (1) a device that can accurately sense shower occupancy across multiple shower/bathtub layouts; (2) a low energy circuit and algorithm for long battery life; and (3) systems engineering of a designed enclosure resilient to a shower's hot and humid environment. Project tasks include signal analysis for sensor accuracy, in-situ pilot testing across all rooms of multiple buildings, industrial design and accelerated aging tests. Technical milestones include: (1) Design a sensor that detects human presence within a 1% error margin when tested across at least 25 different hotel bathtub/shower layouts, (2) Complete live user-sponsored pilot tests in the rooms of at least 3 hotels for at least 1 year, and (3) Demonstrate that the amount of shower water and energy saved is at least 20% when compared to the baseline. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.