System and method for controlling a dryer appliance

An appliance for drying clothing articles, the appliance comprising:

• a container for receiving the clothing articles;
• a motor for rotating the container about an axis;
• a heater for supplying heated air to the container during a dry cycle;
• a sensor for providing a signal indicative of moisture content of the articles;
• and
• a filter coupled to receive the signal indicative of moisture content to perform a digital filtering technique to reduce the level of noise in the received signal, the filtering technique configured to detect changes in the level and/or slope of the received signal, wherein the filtering technique is selected from the group consisting of a Holt's linear filtering technique, a median polish filtering technique, a locally-weighted sum of squares filtering technique, a resistant smoothing filtering technique and a spline fit filtering technique, wherein the filter for performing, the Holt's linear filtering technique comprises first and second smoothing constants having respective values selected based on a rate for sampling the moisture-indicative signal.

An appliance for drying clothing articles, the appliance comprising:

• a container for receiving the clothing articles;
• a motor for rotating the container about an axis;
• a heater for supplying heated air to the container during a dry cycle;
• a sensor for providing a signal indicative of moisture content of the articles;
• and
• a filter coupled to receive the signal indicative of moisture content to perform a digital filtering technique to reduce the level of noise in the received signal, the filtering technique configured to detect changes in the level and/or slope of the received signal, wherein the filtering technique is selected from the group consisting of a Holt's linear filtering technique, a median polish filtering technique, a locally-weighted sum of squares filtering technique, a resistant smoothing filtering technique and a spline fit filtering technique;
• and
• a single exponential smoothing filter having an adjustable smoothing constant having a first value when the level of the moisture-indicative signal being smoothed is increasing and having a second value being smaller relative to the first value when the level of the moisture-indicative signal is decreasing.

An appliance for drying clothing articles, the appliance comprising:

• a container for receiving the clothing articles;
• a motor for rotating the container about an axis;
• a heater for supplying heated air to the container during a dry cycle;
• a sensor for providing a signal indicative of moisture content of the articles;
• memory for storing historical stop time data of respective dry cycles;
• a timer for providing a signal indicative of elapsed time upon start of the dry cycle;
• a module responsive to the historical data in the memory for determining an initial estimate of the stop time of the dry cycle to be executed;
• a processor for estimating the stop time of a respective dry cycle as the cycle is being executed, the estimation of the stop time based on a respective functional relationship of the moisture-indicative signal, and the timer signal, relative to one or more characteristics of the articles and one or more desired values of dry-cycle parameters selectable by a respective user of the dryer;
• and
• a stop time update module configured to update the estimated initial stop time as the dry cycle is being executed based on the stop time estimation from the processor.

An appliance for drying clothing articles, the appliance comprising:

• a container for receiving the clothing articles;
• a motor for rotating the container about an axis;
• a heater for supplying heated air to the container during a dry cycle;
• a sensor for providing a signal indicative of moisture content of the articles;
• a timer for providing a signal indicative of elapsed time upon start of the dry cycle;
• a processor for estimating the stop time of a respective dry cycle as the cycle is being executed, the estimation based on a respective functional relationship of the sensor signal, and the timer signal, relative to one or more characteristics of the articles and one or more desired values of predetermined dry-cycle parameters selectable by a respective user of the dryer;
• and
• a control decision module coupled to the processor to receive the stop time being estimated therein for controlling the appliance subsequent to the dry cycle, the control decision module being configured for controlling execution of a sanitize cycle subsequent to the dry cycle by energizing the heater to supply heated air at a respective heat level for a respective period of time upon execution of the dry cycle.