Design considerations for adaptive control of buildings

The control technology for interior building environments has evolved through heuristic techniques. Only in the past 15 years has modeling and mathematical analysis been applied successfully in the design of controllers. Coincident with the analytical tool development was the development of modern control theory (adaptive and optimal control theory) and the emergence of inexpensive but powerful microcomputers. The combination of these ingredients will reset in better controllers and control systems, but this will not occur until several hurdles are overcome. This paper outlines these issues and suggests areas for future work.