Gaining a better understanding of how people move through the spaces where they live and work could make those spaces safer and more sustainable. But no one wants cameras watching them 24/7.
Two former Media Lab researchers think they have a solution. Their company, Butlr, offers places like skilled nursing facilities, offices, and senior living communities a way to understand how people are using buildings without compromising privacy. Butlr uses low-resolution thermal sensors and an analytics platform to help detect falls in elderly populations, save energy, and optimize spaces for work.
“We have this vision of using the right technology to understand people’s movements and behaviors in space,” says Jiani Zeng SM ’20, who co-founded Butlr with former Media Lab research affiliate Honghao Deng. “So many resources today go toward cameras and AI that take away people’s privacy. We believe we can make our environments safer, healthier, and more sustainable without violating privacy.”
To date, the company has sold more than 20,000 of its privacy-preserving sensors to senior living and skilled nursing facilities as well as businesses with large building footprints, including Verizon, Netflix, and Microsoft. In the future, Butlr hopes to enable more dynamic spaces that can understand and respond to the ways people use them.
“Space should be like a digital user interface: It should be multi-use and responsive to your needs,” Deng says. “If the office has a big room with people working individually, it should automatically separate into smaller rooms, or lights and temperature should be adjusted to save energy.”
Building intelligence, with privacy
As an undergraduate at Tianjin University in China, Deng joined the Media Lab’s City Science Group as a visiting student in 2016. He went on to complete his master’s at Harvard University, but he returned to the Media Lab as a research affiliate and led projects around what he calls responsive architecture: spaces that can understand their users’ needs through non-camera sensors.
“My vision of the future of building environments emerged from the Media Lab,” Deng says. “The real world is the largest user interface around usβit’s not the screens. We all live in a three-dimensional world and yet, unlike the digital world, this user interface doesn’t yet understand our needs, let alone the critical situations when someone falls in a room. That could be life-saving.”
Zeng came to MIT as a master’s student in the Integrated Design and Management program, which was run jointly out of the MIT Sloan School of Management and the School of Engineering. She also worked as a research assistant at the Media Lab and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL).
The pair met during a hackathon at the Media Lab and continued collaborating on various projects. During that time, they worked with MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service (VMS) and the MIT I-Corps Program. When they graduated in 2019, they decided to start a company based on the idea of creating smart buildings with privacy-preserving sensors. Crucial early funding came from the Media Lab-affiliated E14 Fund.
“I tell every single MIT founder they should have the E14 Fund in their cap table,” Deng says. “They understand what it takes to go from an MIT student to a founder, and to transition from the ‘scientist brain’ to the ‘inventor brain.’ We wouldn’t be where we are today without MIT.”
Ray Stata ’57, SM ’58, the founder of Analog Devices, is also an investor in Butlr and serves as Butlr’s board director.
“We would love to give back to the MIT community once we become successful entrepreneurs like Ray, whose advice and mentoring has been invaluable,” Deng says.
After launching, the founders had to find the right early customers for their real-time sensors, which can discern rough body shapes but no personally identifiable information. They interviewed hundreds of people before starting with owners of office spaces.
“People have zero baseline data on what’s happening in their workplace,” Deng says. “That’s especially true since the COVID-19 pandemic made people hybrid, which has opened huge opportunities to cut the energy use of large office spaces. Sometimes, the only people in these buildings are the receptionist and the cleaner.”
Butlr’s multiyear, battery-powered sensors can track daily occupancy in each room and give other insights into space utilization that can be used to reduce energy use. For companies with a lot of office space, the opportunities are immense. One Butlr customer has 40 building leases. Deng says optimizing the HVAC controls based on usage could amount to millions of dollars saved.
“We can be like the Google Analytics for these spaces without any concerns in terms of privacy,” Deng says.
The founders also knew the problem went well beyond office spaces.
“In skilled nursing facilities, instead of office spaces it’s individual rooms, all with people who may need the nurse’s help,” Deng says. “But the nurses have no visibility into what’s happening unless they physically enter the room.”
Acute care environments and senior living facilities are another key market for Butlr. The company’s platform can detect falls and instances when someone isn’t getting out of bed to alert staff. The system integrates with nurse calling systems to alert staff when something is wrong.
The ‘nerve cells’ of the building
Butlr is continuing to develop analytics that give important insights into spaces. For instance, today the platform can use information around movement in elderly populations to help detect problems like urinary tract infections.
Butlr also recently started a collaboration with Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Artificial Intelligence and Technology Center for Connected Care in Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease. Through the project, Butlr will try to detect changes in movement that could indicate declining cognitive or physical abilities. Those insights could be used to provide aging patients with more supervision.
“In the near term we are preventing falls, but the vision is when you look up in any buildings or homes, you’ll see Butlr,” Deng says. “This could allow older adults to age in place with dignity and privacy.”
More broadly, Butlr’s founders see their work as an important way to shape the future of AI technology, which is expected to be a growing part of everyone’s lives.
“We’re the nerve cells in the building, not the eyes,” Deng says. “That’s the future of AI we believe in: AI that can transform regular rooms into spaces that understand people and can use that understanding to do everything from making efficiency improvements to saving lives in senior care communities. That’s the right way to use this powerful technology.”
This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching.
