Autonomous Robotic Building Energy Audits: Demonstrated Technology and Open Challenges (LB-17-001)

Building operations are a significant consumer of energy and contributor to carbon emissions in the U.S. and around the globe. Energy audits offer significant potential in reducing building energy use by providing tailored recommendations involving equipment upgrades, operational adjustments and building recommissioning. However, energy audits are a time intensive process that requires significant experience and training. This causes high costs related to performing an audit and prevents many businesses from having an audit completed. Automating the audit process will not only reduce the cost of audits, but clients will be provided with more repeatable and accurate recommendations based on improved data collection and analysis. Previous work and the current state of the art of robotic auditing tools are discussed in this paper, followed by open challenges and future possibilities of autonomous vehicles for conducting audits.