Radiant heat transfer is an often overlooked component in building design, not due to lack of importance (radiant temperature is as important as air temperature when describing comfort), but because of lack of monitoring devices. The average, or mean radiant temperature in a room is a position-dependent, air-independent parameter that is often imprecise and expensive to measure.

CHAOS has developed a novel radiant temperature sensor that uses servos to trace the surface of a sphere in space with a non-contacting infrared temperature sensor. The sphere shape is convenient as it mimics conventional black-globe mean radiant temperature sensors. However, our design creates one pixel of temperature data at each data point, which can be stitched together to create a thermal image that provides the user with a directional thermal image of the room. In the image below you can see the sensor at work, finding a person in the room.