SYDNEY — BuildingIQ has announced the acquisition of comfort sensing technology, comprised of the OptiCool and ComfortSENSE subsystems and interface, from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) for approximately AUD$500,000.

Until now, BuildingIQ had an exclusive worldwide license to use and commercially exploit the core technology in commercial buildings as a component of its Predictive Energy Optimization™ (PEO) offering. As part of this agreement, BuildingIQ has obtained all intellectual property rights in the core technology, associated patents, and patent applications. The company said the human comfort technology enhances its 5i energy intelligence platform.

“CSIRO is one of the largest and most diverse research agencies in the world and was the birthplace of our platform technology in 2009,” said Michael Nark, president and CEO of BuildingIQ. “Over time we’ve worked tirelessly to enhance the data analysis, learning modeling, and predictive control capabilities of this technology, and it remains a core component of the new BuildingIQ 5i platform”

The acquired ComfortSENSE technology has the potential to expand BuildingIQ’s data capture and modeling capabilities. The technology was built to provide individual building occupants with a gateway to share information on their comfort level in real-time. Within the 5i platform, this would essentially allow each person to act as the ultimate building sensor. Once incorporated into the 5i platform, this could provide a valuable data stream for further refinement of BuildingIQ’s thermal, occupancy, and behavior modeling competencies.

“The addition of real-time human comfort input will extend our ability to analyze and predict BMS [building management system] performance and its impact on people,” said Adam Benson, BuildingIQ’s vice president of engineering. “Building occupants are the ultimate intelligent sensor in many ways. We’re excited to be able to incorporate the human factor into our platform and ensure that we remain at the forefront of innovation in building energy management solutions.”

For more information, visit www.buildingiq.com.

Publication date: 8/11/2016

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