Enhancing Human-Building Interaction by Integrating Wearable Physiological Sensors, Augmented Reality, and Smart IoT-Enabled Sensing Devices to Improve User Indoor Environment Experience

Human-building interaction (HBI) focuses on understanding the cognitive mechanism of how humans interact with buildings and their technologies. The cognitive mechanism is generally assessed using physiological sensors. Augmented reality (AR), smart IoT devices, and wearable sensors are some of the main technological advancements that are being used to assess and improve HBI in the building and construction industry. While different research efforts have been directed to study the HBI in the construction industry, little to no research studies were conducted to integrate physiological sensors, AR technologies, and smart IoT devices to enhance the user’s indoor building environment experience. To address this gap, this paper introduces a novel approach, involving the development of a smart IoT device to measure the user’s thermal comfort, the integration of this device with cooling and heating HVAC systems for enhanced indoor environmental control, and the fusion of the IoT device with a developed AR application, which adds digital layers and interactive elements to enhance user perception. Wearable physiological sensors are also interfaced to better understand user interactions with the building and technology. The obtained results reflected that the proposed approach could substantially enhance HBI and the user’s indoor environment experience. This research contributes to understanding and identifying factors affecting the user experience and developing technologies that make the user experience more comfortable, engaging, and personalized.