  Lighting design in indoor environments is of primary importance for at least
two reasons: 1) people should perceive an adequate light; 2) an effective
lighting design means consistent energy saving. We present the Invisible Light
Switch (ILS) to address both aspects. ILS dynamically adjusts the room
illumination level to save energy while maintaining constant the light level
perception of the users. So the energy saving is invisible to them. Our
proposed ILS leverages a radiosity model to estimate the light level which is
perceived by a person within an indoor environment, taking into account the
person position and her/his viewing frustum (head pose). ILS may therefore dim
those luminaires, which are not seen by the user, resulting in an effective
energy saving, especially in large open offices (where light may otherwise be
ON everywhere for a single person). To quantify the system performance, we have
collected a new dataset where people wear luxmeter devices while working in
office rooms. The luxmeters measure the amount of light (in Lux) reaching the
people gaze, which we consider a proxy to their illumination level perception.
Our initial results are promising: in a room with 8 LED luminaires, the energy
consumption in a day may be reduced from 18585 to 6206 watts with ILS
(currently needing 1560 watts for operations). While doing so, the drop in
perceived lighting decreases by just 200 lux, a value considered negligible
when the original illumination level is above 1200 lux, as is normally the case
in offices.
