Virtual sensor system

Abstract

A sensing system includes a sensor assembly and a back end server system. The sensor assembly includes a collection of sensors in communication with a control circuit. The sensors are each configured to sense one or more physical phenomena in an environment of the sensor assembly. The control circuit of the sensor assembly is configured to identify one or more selected sensors of the collection of sensors whose data corresponds to an event occurring in the environment of the sensor assembly and transmit data to the back end server system. The back end server system is configured to generate a first order virtual sensor by training a machine learning model to detect the event based on the data from at least one of the selected sensors and detect the event using the trained first order virtual sensor and data from the selected sensors.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A sensing system comprising:
 a sensor assembly comprising a collection of sensors in communication with a control circuit, wherein each of the sensors in the collection of sensors is configured to sense one or more physical phenomena in an environment of the sensor assembly; and   a back end server system, comprising at least one server, that is in communication with the sensor assembly, wherein:   the control circuit of the sensor assembly is configured to:
 identify one or more selected sensors of the collection of sensors whose data corresponds to an event occurring in the environment of the sensor assembly, and 
 transmit data from the one or more selected sensors to the back end server system, and 
   the at least one server of the back end server system is configured to:
 generate a first order virtual sensor by training a machine learning model to detect the event based on the data from at least one of the one or more selected sensors, and 
 detect the event using the trained first order virtual sensor and data from the one or more selected sensors. 
   
     
     
         2 . The sensing system of  claim 1 , wherein the event detected by the first order virtual sensor is directly or indirectly sensed by any of the sensors in the collection of sensors of the sensor assembly. 
     
     
         3 . The sensing system  claim 1 , wherein the at least one server of the back end server system is further configured to generate a second order virtual sensor to detect, based on, at least in part, outputs of the first order virtual sensor, a second order condition in the environment of the sensor assembly. 
     
     
         4 . The sensing system of  claim 3 , wherein the back end server system is configured to transmit a notification to a remote computer-based system when a particular condition is detected by the first or the second order virtual sensor. 
     
     
         5 . The sensing system of  claim 1 , wherein the collection of sensors comprise at least one passive sensor selected from the group consisting of an infrared radiation sensor, an ambient light color sensor, an ambient light intensity sensor, a magnetic field sensor, a temperature sensor, an ambient pressure sensor, a humidity sensor, a vibration sensor, an external device communication sensor, a motion sensor, an acoustic sensor, an indoor air quality sensor, a chemical sensor, a vision sensor, and an electromagnetic interference sensor. 
     
     
         6 . The sensing system of  claim 1 , wherein the collection of sensors comprise at least one active sensor selected from the group consisting of a sonar sensor, an ultrasonic sensor, a light emitting sensor, a radar based sensor, an acoustic sensor, an infrared camera, an active infrared sensor, an indoor positioning system, an x-ray based sensor, a seismic sensor, and an active sound measurement system. 
     
     
         7 . The sensing system of  claim 1 , wherein:
 the sensing system further comprises an output feedback device selected from the group consisting of a speaker, a light source, a vibration source and a wireless communication device;   the back end server system is configured to transmit a notification to the sensor assembly when a particular event is detected by the first order virtual sensor; and   the sensor assembly is configured to transmit a notification to a user via the output feedback device in response to receiving the notification from the back end server system that the particular event was detected.   
     
     
         8 . The sensing system of  claim 1 , wherein the first order virtual sensor comprises a classifier that is trained to detect the event in the environment of the sensor assembly. 
     
     
         9 . The sensing system of  claim 8 , wherein the classifier is trained using at least one of supervised learning or unsupervised learning. 
     
     
         10 . The sensing system of  claim 1 , wherein:
 the sensor assembly comprises a housing;   the collection of sensors are connected to one or more circuit boards; and   the housing houses the one or more circuit boards, the collection of sensors, and the control circuit.   
     
     
         11 . The sensing system of  claim 1 , wherein the control circuit of the sensor assembly is configured to identify the one or more selected sensors of the collection of sensors whose data corresponds to the event by:
 determining a baseline profile of the environment; and   using the baseline profile to determine the one or more sensors from the collection of sensors that are correlated to the event.   
     
     
         12 . The sensing system of  claim 1 , wherein the at least one server of the back end server system is configured to transmit to the sensor assembly an instruction for identifying the one or more sensors in the collection of sensors. 
     
     
         13 . The sensing system of  claim 1 , further comprising, by the control circuit, extracting a plurality of features from raw sensor data collected from one or more of the selected sensors before transmission to the back end server system. 
     
     
         14 . The sensing system of  claim 1 , further comprising, by the at least one server of the back end server system, transmitting the trained first order virtual sensor to a datastore for storage for use by another back end server system. 
     
     
         15 . The sensing system of  claim 1 , wherein:
 the sensor assembly is one of a plurality of sensor assemblies distributed throughout a location, wherein each of the plurality of sensor assemblies is in communication with the back end server system; and   each of the plurality of sensor assemblies comprises a collection of sensors connected to a control circuit, wherein each of the sensors in the collection of sensors is configured to sense one or more physical phenomena in a local environment of the sensor assembly, wherein the control circuit of that sensor assembly is configured to:
 identify one or more selected sensors of the collection of sensors whose data corresponds to the event occurring in the environment of the sensor assembly, and 
 transmit data from the one or more selected sensors to the back end server system, and 
   the first order virtual sensor is trained through machine learning to detect, based on the data transmitted from the plurality of sensor assemblies, the event in the location.   
     
     
         16 . A method comprising:
 sensing, by a sensor assembly that comprises a collection of sensors in communication with a control circuit, each of which configured to detect one or more physical phenomena in an environment of the sensor assembly;   identifying, by the sensor assembly, one or more selected sensors of the collection of sensors whose data corresponds to an event occurring in the environment of the sensor assembly;   generating, by a back end server system communicably connected to the sensor assembly, a first order virtual sensor by training a machine learning model to detect the event based on data from the one or more selected sensors; and   detecting, by the trained first order virtual sensor, based on the data from the one or more selected sensors, the event in the environment of the sensor assembly.   
     
     
         17 . The method of  claim 15 , further comprising
 extracting, by the sensor assembly, a plurality of features from raw sensor data collected by the one or more selected sensors; and   transmitting, by the sensor assembly, the featurized data to the back end server system that comprises at least one server.   
     
     
         18 . The method of  claim 15 , wherein:
 generating the first order virtual sensor comprises training the machine learning model through supervised training with labeled data; and   the method further comprises the step of receiving, by the back end server system, via an user interface, annotations of occurrences of the event to use as the labeled data for the supervised training.   
     
     
         18 . The method of  claim 16 , wherein generating the first order virtual sensor comprises training the machine learning model through unsupervised learning using a deep learning algorithm. 
     
     
         19 . The method of  claim 16 , wherein identifying the one or more selected sensors of the collection of sensors whose data corresponds to the event comprises:
 determining a baseline profile of the environment; and   using the baseline profile to determine the one or more sensors from the collection of sensors that are correlated to the event.   
     
     
         20 . The method of  claim 19 , wherein the at least one server of the back end server system is configured to transmit to the sensor assembly an instruction for identifying the one or more sensors in the collection of sensors.