Patent ID: 8630741

Claim:
An intelligent controller comprising: a processor; a memory that stores a control schedule and an indication of a presence state, one or more sensors; and instructions stored within the memory that, when executed by the processor, controls the intelligent controller to record output from the one or more sensors in memory, and at intervals, determine a probability of presence of one or more entities within a region of a controlled environment using the recorded sensor output in memory, update the indication of the presence state, and upon a change of the indication of the presence state, accordingly adjust the control schedule; wherein determining a probability of presence of one or more entities within a region further includes determining, for one or more regions and volumes within the controlled environment, one or more of one or more presence-probability maps, and one or more presence-probability scalar values; and wherein the intelligent controller determines the probability of presence of one or more entities within one or more regions and volumes within the controlled environment by for each of the one or more regions and volumes, determining a cumulative presence-probability scalar or cumulative presence-probability-map values from a presence-probability scalar or from presence-probability-map values determined from output of each of the one or more sensors, and applying rules to the cumulative presence-probability scalar or cumulative presence-probability-map values in order to adjust the cumulative presence-probability scalar or cumulative presence-probability-map values for one or more additional considerations based on the additional electronically accessible information.