The reinforcement learning method for occupant behavior in building control: A review

Abstract

Occupant behavior in buildings has been considered the major source of uncertainty for assessing energy consumption and building performance. Modeling frameworks are usually built to accomplish a certain task, but the stochasticity of the occupant makes it difficult to apply that experience to a similar but distinct environment. For complex and dynamic environments, the development of smart devices and computing power makes intelligent control methods for occupant behaviors more viable. It is expected that they will make a substantial contribution to reducing global energy consumption. Among these control techniques, the reinforcement learning (RL) method seems distinctive and applicable. The success of the reinforcement learning method in many artificial intelligence applications has given an explicit indication of how this method might be used to model and adjust occupant behavior in building control. Fruitful algorithms complement each other and guarantee the quality of the optimization. However, the examination of occupant behavior based on reinforcement learning methodologies is not well established. The way that occupant interacts with the RL agent is still unclear. This study briefly reviews the empirical applications using reinforcement learning, how they have contributed to shaping the modeling paradigms and how they might suggest a future research direction.

Keywords

• Reinforcement learning
• Occupant behavior
• Energy efficiency
• Building control
• Smart building