What does a thermostat-driven infrared-gating textile do that its fixed closed and open states do not?

What it found

Adds a skin-temperature-triggered gate (hysteresis band, first-order actuation lag) to the switchable two-node comfort model (stylised, preliminary). In constant 31, 24 and 16 C rooms over 3 h the gate settles into one of the two fixed states with at most one change, so it cannot beat the best fixed state; a 10 min lag only delays the start (open 94% vs 98% of minutes at 31 C). Threshold placement matters more: a 32–35 C band opens under one set of design choices and never under the other. A mostly null result; it needs changing conditions to show value. No fabric or person was measured.

A figure from its own output

Paper, code and results

• README and method
• Experiments and results
• Code
• Tests

More in Engineered clothing

• When the room temperature steps, does a thermostat-driven infrared-gating textile beat its fixed states and approach an oracle?Under a single step in room temperature, a thermostat-driven infrared-gating textile beats both fixed states after a step up and tracks an oracle schedule closely (stylised).
• When the metabolic rate steps from rest to walking, does a thermostat-driven infrared-gating textile beat its fixed states?A step in metabolic rate (rest to walking) instead of room temperature for the thermostat infrared-gating textile: at 24 C the gate beats both fixed states under one choice set and ties fixed closed under the other, at 28 C staying open is as good as any policy, and a 10 min lag erases the gain after walking stops; stylised, preliminary.
• If a thermostat infrared-gating band is tuned on some rooms, does it still help in rooms it never saw?Tuning the thermostat infrared-gating band on training rooms and testing on held-out rooms: a narrow band just below 33.7 C carries over (about 0.01 to 0.06 C better than the untuned band) but chatters, up to 24 switches in 180 min (stylised).
• Does a tuned infrared-gating thermostat survive an actuation lag and a cost per switch?Retuning the thermostat infrared-gating band with an actuation lag (0 to 10 min) and a cost per switch: lag cuts the gain over never switching from 0.23 to 0.15 C (stylised), a switch penalty widens the band and stops the chatter, and under one choice set the tuned band can lose to the untuned one.
• Does a proportional infrared-gating textile beat the on/off thermostat gate?A proportional infrared-gating transmittance against the tuned on/off thermostat gate: a negative result, within 0.010 C in every cell because the tuned ramp collapses to nearly on/off, and a softer ramp costs 0.02 to 0.07 C (stylised).
• At what switching penalty does a proportional infrared gate beat the on/off thermostat gate?Prices actuation in equal units (one full close-open swing = 1) and asks when a proportional infrared gate beats the on/off gate: it wins in 52 of 80 held-out cells, by tenths of a degree at most, and the gain reverses in the outside rooms at the highest penalty (stylised, preliminary).

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Produced with AI assistance (Claude). Results are from the code in this repository and are simulated or stylised unless the abstract says otherwise; nothing here implies affiliation with or endorsement by any lab, researcher or company cited. MIT licensed.