The new "ZW series" air conditioner lineup for home use from Mitsubishi Electric Corp comes with enhanced energy saving efficiency and user's comfort based on a system that controls air conditioning in light of human location in the room. The Mitsubishi ZW series air conditioners detect human location with an infrared sensor unit called "Human Sensor Move Eye." This unit is attached downward in the middle of an indoor unit's bottom face and automatically moves between left and right. It takes about one minute for the sensor unit to go back and forth between a range of 160 degrees wide. Through this move, the sensor unit measures temperature of the room's floor and wall. With the new Human Sensor Move Eye system, a row of seven infrared sensors scans inside the room and each sensor acquires temperature data by dividing its coverage area into 66 segments. In other words, the system can acquire temperature data from about 500 segments. In this manner, the new air conditioners locate humans, centralize the area of air conditioning to the location of a man and automatically switch to economic mode when no one is sensed inside the room, for example.

The system can save up to 50% of power, combining 10% by integrating air conditioning area to the human location and 10% by switching to economic mode when nobody is in the room, along with existing energy saving effect (about 30%) by weakening air conditioning in line with floor temperature. Mitsubishi Electric Corp. will launch seven models in ZW series air conditioner lineup for home use from mid December 2006.
Via TechOn