Non-invasive infrared thermography technology for thermal comfort: A review

Non-invasive infrared thermography (IRT) technology has emerged as a promising tool for real-time prediction of thermal comfort and offers a novel approach for controlling heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. This paper provides an overview of research on thermal comfort based on IRT, followed by a discussion on factors affecting the prediction and improvement measures, as well as future research trends and challenges. The review results indicate that skin temperature measured by IRT has good predictive effectiveness in thermal comfort prediction, with a median prediction accuracy of approximately 80.0 %. To improve the accuracy of thermal comfort prediction based on IRT, the infrared camera can be calibrated or the influencing factors can be used as additional features in the thermal comfort estimation. And low-precision infrared imaging cameras can be set within 1.0 m of the subject. Moreover, creating a comfortable and healthy indoor thermal environment can be achieved by using IRT for comprehensively assessment. To advance research on IRT in the field of thermal comfort, the development of high-quality infrared thermography datasets enriched with detailed annotations is deemed necessary.