Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.

Irobot Corporation

Daniel J Burns

Scott Bortoff

Christopher Laughman

Hongtao Qiao

Stefano Di Cairano

Richard C Waters

Claus Danielson

Teresa Borcuch

Martin Guay

Walter Weiss

Junqiang Zhou

Described herein are systems and methods for assessing a health status of a cleaning head assembly in a mobile cleaning robot. The mobile robot includes motorized cleaning member that rotatably engages a floor surface to extract debris. An exemplary system includes a processor circuit that receives robot data produced by the mobile cleaning robot traversing an environment, determines a robot parameter using a portion of the received robot data corresponding to a floor area having a specific surface condition traversed repeatedly by the mobile cleaning robot, and determines a state of the cleaning head and an estimate of remaining useful life of the cleaning head based on the robot parameter. The determined state of the cleaning head system can be provide to a user via a user interface.

Predictive maintenance of mobile cleaning robot

Systems and methods for a vapor compression system including primary actuators, secondary actuators, primary sensors that provide a primary set of system outputs, and secondary sensors that provide a secondary set of system outputs. A primary controller receives the primary set of system outputs, and produces a primary set of control inputs for the primary actuators, to regulate one or more zone temperatures to set-points and to regulate one or more critical process variables to set-points. A secondary controller receives the secondary set of system outputs, and produces a secondary set of control inputs, to minimize an overall system power consumption. The secondary inputs may include set-points to the primary controller. The primary outputs may include estimates of critical process variables that are used as inputs to the secondary controller.

System and method for power optimizing control of multi-zone heat pumps

A vapor compression system includes a heat transfer system including an arrangement of components moving a refrigerant through a vapor compression cycle to condition a controlled environment and a refrigerant management system including at least one expansion device regulating an amount of the refrigerant in the vapor compression cycle. The vapor compression system also includes a controller including a processor jointly controlling the expansion device and at least one component of the heat transfer system according to a metric of performance of the vapor compression system.

System and method for controlling refrigerant in vapor compression system

A method controls a vapor compression system including a variable speed compressor. A desired discharge temperature of the compressor is determined using a mapping between values of the discharge temperature of the compressor and values of speed of the compressor and outdoor air temperature. A transition function for transitioning a current discharge temperature to the desired discharge temperature is determined, such that the transition function is continuous and a rate of change of the transition function is limited. Next, a valve of the vapor compression system is controlled such that the discharge temperature is transitioned to the desired discharge temperature based on the transition function.

System and method for controlling vapor compression systems

A controller controls a first air-conditioning system and a second air-conditioning system having separate refrigerant circuits, but arranged for conditioning a common space. The controller includes a multi-variable regulator to determine control signals for controlling operations of first components of the first and the second refrigerant circuits to reduce jointly and concurrently an environmental error between setpoint and measured values of environment in the common space. The controller also includes at least two single-variable regulators to receive operational errors between setpoint and measured values of an operation of a second component of the first and the second refrigerant circuits. The controller separately determines control signals for controlling the operation of different refrigerant circuits that reduce the operational errors. The controller also includes a lookup table that stores values for other inputs of the systems that improve its performance, and which selects specific input values for both systems according to the outputs of the multi-variable and/or single variable regulators. The controller includes an electrical circuit for controlling the first and the second air-conditioning systems according to the determined control signals.

Coordinated operation of multiple space-conditioning systems

A multi-zone vapor compression system (MZ-VCS) includes a compressor connected to a set of heat exchangers controlling environments in a set of zones. A supervisory controller includes a processor configured for optimizing a cost function subject to constraints on an operation of the MZ-VCS to produce a set of values of the thermal capacity requested for the set of heat exchangers to achieve setpoint temperatures in the corresponding zones. The supervisory controller is a model predictive controller for determining the set of control inputs using a model of the MZ-VCS including a linear relationship between the thermal capacity of each heat exchanger and the temperature in a corresponding zone controlled by the heat exchanger. A set of capacity controllers, wherein there is one capacity controller for each heat exchanger, such that each capacity controller is configured for controlling the corresponding heat exchanger to achieve the requested thermal capacity.

System and method for controlling multi-zone vapor compression systems

A system controls a multi-zone vapor compression system (MZ-VCS). The system includes a controller to control a vapor compression cycle of the MZ-VCS using a set of control inputs determined by optimizing a cost function including a set of control parameters. The optimizing is subject to constraints, and wherein the cost function is optimized over a prediction horizon. The system also includes a memory to store an optimization function parameterized by a configuration of the MZ-VCS defining active or inactive modes of each heat exchanger, the optimization function modifies, according to a current configuration, values of the control parameters of the cost function determined for a full configuration that includes all heat exchangers in the active mode. The system also includes a processor to determine the current configuration of the MZ-VCS and to update the cost function by submitting the current configuration to the optimization function.

System and method for controlling multi-zone vapor compression system

A vapor compression system includes a heat exchanger having an inlet header pipe connected to a set of paths for passing refrigerant to condition a controlled zone. The inlet header pipe splits the refrigerant into different paths. An amount of the refrigerant entering the inlet header pipe is controlled by a valve. The vapor compression system also includes a set of sensors for measuring temperatures of the refrigerant in each path of the set of paths and a controller including a processor for determining a position of the valve based on the measurements of at least one sensor from the set of sensors and a thermal capacity requested for the heat exchanger.

A method for controlling a vapor compression system determines a value of a metric of performance of the vapor compression system using a previous value of an estimated parameter and a previous value of a control signal determined for a previous time step of the control. The values of the estimated parameter represent a relationship between values of the control signal and values of the metric of performance. A current value of the estimated parameter is determined based on the previous value of the estimated parameter and an error between the determined value of the metric of performance and a measured value of the metric of performance. Next, a current value of the control signal is determined based on the current value of the estimated parameter.

Time-varying extremum seeking for controlling vapor compression systems

A branch controller operates with a system for temperature and humidity control. The branch controller includes a fluid control system for controlling a flow of the liquid desiccant in an arrangement of channels forming a first path for exchanging the liquid desiccant between a liquid desiccant conditioning unit and at least a first space conditioning unit and a second path for directing the liquid desiccant received from the first space conditioning unit to a second space conditioning unit. The branch controller includes a processor for comparing operational conditions of the first space conditioning unit and the second space conditioning unit. The processor selects between the first path and the second path based on the comparison and commands the fluid control system to control the flow of the liquid desiccant according to the selected path.

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Wakefield, MA, United States of America

Daniel J Burns