Butlr Fuses AI and Body Heat Sensing Technology to Shape The Future of Sustainable Buildings for Working and Living

Butlr fuses artificial intelligence with body heat sensing technology to understand subtle movements in a space. These insights are shaping how people work, live and interact in indoor spaces.

The company's patented, palm-sized, wireless sensors easily mount to the wall or ceiling and are purposely designed to be incapable of capturing any personally identifiable information.

Butlr understands what is happening in a space while offering complete anonymity and privacy.

Using machine learning algorithms, Butlr provides real-time and historical spatial insights into how a space is being used. These insights accurately discern activity, occupancy, indoor location, and body posture. This results in working and living environments that are more comfortable, safer, and energy efficient.

Essentially, Butlr makes buildings 'people aware.' By providing a baseline of actual occupancy, operating and capital, Butlr helps inform business decisions based on how the building functions today and ways to improve the human experiences within it.

Butlr is used by the world's largest companies in hospitality, senior living, health care, commercial real estate, retail, and public transportation. These businesses rely on Butlr insights for decisions about reducing a building's carbon footprint, space utilization, user experiences, and safety.

In 2023, Butlr introduced its next generation Heatic™ wireless sensors, data and analytics. These sensors are shaping the future of building sustainability and how people work, live and healthily age.

How Butlr Sensors Shape the Future of Senior Care

The World Health Organization estimates the population of people aged 60 years or older will double by 2050, representing 2.1 billion people. For senior care at assisted living facilities and to help people age in place, Butlr technology understands subtle movements in a space. The insights enable senior care providers to proactively identify potential signs of dementia, stroke and frailty. Along with supporting seniors in a dignified manner, without the need for intrusive cameras or wristbands, Butlr also helps facilities close staffing gaps and adhere to compliance requirements.

How Butlr Sensors Shape The Future of Work

Employers use Butlr technology to create supportive and collaborative work environments. Commercial real estate professionals use Butlr technology for private and accurate insights on office usage to offer flexible leasing options while executing a smart building strategy featuring more energy efficient properties with a lower carbon footprint.

Butlr People Sensing Platform is the world's first and only context-aware smart building solution that anonymously infers human presence and activity by detecting body heat. By leveraging machine learning algorithms, Butlr can accurately generate occupancy, headcount, and activity data, providing real-time and historical spatial insights that drive better space utilization, optimize pricing, streamline operations, and improve the user experience in commercial real estate. In senior living facilities, Butlr has proven to be an invaluable tool for frailty analysis and fall detection by analyzing movement patterns and speed.

Butlr's New Heatic 2™ Sensors

The latest sensors from Butlr are wirelessly and magnetically mounted on a wall or ceiling, installed in a fraction of the time of wired solutions, and cover twice the area of the original sensors.

Primary features include:

Machine Learning, Insight-Driven Platform

Butlr's platform includes a "Zones'' feature to monitor desk utilization, soft seating and activity. The Space Visualizer shows usage trends based on heatmaps and people detections over time. The related data allows customers to conduct A/B testing to determine the best office layout that reflects the culture of the workforce and needs of the organization.

Also, as part of Butlr's API-first strategy, customers and partners can easily integrate Butlr occupancy data with other databases and develop customized tools that meet their specific business requirements. Since the API is intuitive, users can choose how they interact with their information to make the most use of real-time occupancy data for revenue modeling, space planning, energy usage, cleaning schedules, and tenant interactions.

Generative AI Capabilities

Taking advantage of generative AI capabilities, Butlr offers two GPTs for customers. "Butlr Care GPT" is for assisted living and long-term care facilities and "Butlr GPT for Smart Buildings" is for commercial buildings where people work and live. These opt-in GPTs from Butlr can be used as reference designs for partners' and customers' internal GPTs to optimize buildings for energy efficiency, collaboration, comfort, and safety.

Butlr Care GPT

The Butlr Care GPT improves safety and treatment of residents and patients in senior care while protecting their privacy.

The Butlr Care GPT is built on the Butlr Care offering. Butlr Care goes beyond wired wristbands and monitors by alerting staff to wandering, and monitoring subtle movement patterns for early identification of frailty and potential falls. Butlr insights enable care teams to respond faster, mitigate the impact of acute health risks, and ensure compliance while helping fill the labor shortage through more efficient use of staff.

Using Butlr Care GPT, care teams can get additional insight to highlight health risks and improve quality of care. For example, asking the Butlr Care GPT for insight on abnormal activities regarding movements, and the events patterns of residents or patients. By providing an aggregated view of recorded events and mobility data, physicians can identify early signs of potential age-related health issues, without requiring staff to spend additional hours doing manual logging and reporting.

Butlr GPT for Smart Buildings

The Butlr GPT for Smart Buildings can result in buildings running more efficiently with reduced energy costs. For example, customers may modify their HVAC and cleaning and maintenance schedules based on occupancy and usage.

Customers can also use the GPT to visualize a customized office design, layout, huddle areas, conference rooms, and more based on the specific needs of their corporate culture and how they use the office. Similarly, retailers can apply Butlr GPT insights to store layout and design that aligns with customer needs and interests.

Design Innovation

We believe good technologies respect privacy and elevate human dignity. In the design process, we humanize the technology, making it more approachable and friendly.

Inspired by our name "Butlr," we designed our sensor to embody the qualities of a great butler: always present but rarely noticed. Staying discreet is a matter of honor as they are often the only staff members that remain in the room with a principal and guests. Our sensor is designed to be less noticeable, clean, rounded, and unlike many motion sensors, it can be switched off easily.

A great butler must be versatile, seamlessly transitioning between multiple responsibilities. Similarly, installing Heatic sensor is as easy as hanging a picture frame using our elegantly designed magnetic mounts. We've prioritized scalability in our design by eliminating non-essential components such as wiring and installation crews, resulting in quick and simple installation that translates to the lowest cost of ownership.

We patented a 3D interface and software to simplify installation and monitoring, which we call a "context-aware" digital twin of physical spaces. Traditionally, Smart Home applications only show a list of device names and locations for users to control and actuate lights, curtains, etc. Butlr's interface lets users build digital spaces with 3D contextual information that accurately maps people's coordination and trajectory as well as space heatmap in real-time and historical modes. We want to help our customers make sense of what cannot be seen in spaces and to work towards a future where spaces are activated by Good Technologies.

Privacy-conscious smart sensing using low-resolution thermal data

Butlr detects people's movements using proprietary Thermopile Arrays and an intelligent, long-lasting battery pack. Its coordinated sensing elements can measure absolute temperatures and temperature gradients to identify individuals through significantly higher temperature cells. Unlike passive infrared (PIR) motion sensors, Butlr's Heat Sensor can detect motionless people. Additionally, it works in light or dark environments and uses under 100 non-RGB thermal pixels, making it physically incapable of collecting any personal information. Despite using only a limited number of pixels, Butlr's patented hardware system and machine learning algorithm are able to accurately track and extract information about people's movements.

100% wireless with a multi-year battery life

As an industry first, Butlr Heatic sensors are 100% wireless while operating in real time with a multi-year battery life. Butlr developed an extremely low power, self-healing, self-maintenance and self-configuration mesh network that can transmit data in real time to the cloud.

Plug and play and scalability

Indoor positioning tech has struggled due to accuracy issues (wifi), high deployment costs and infrastructure needs (Bluetooth, cameras, LiDAR), and privacy concerns (cameras). PIRs have been an option, but they require physical movement to trigger. Butlr's Heatic tech solves these issues with fully wireless sensors that are easy to install, affordable, and accurate. Plus, its machine learning features ensure they get smarter over time, offering better experiences and insights. The hardware is elegant, and the interface is user-friendly for setup and monitoring.

Butlr's vision for the future of responsive buildings is one that relies on more "nerve cells" than "eyes." It uses discreet technology to increase spatial understanding in the built environment while preserving individual privacy and dignity. By enabling richer consumer experiences, higher quality of care, and better business outcomes, Butlr is driving the next generation of smart buildings that put people first.