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The lack of thermal comfort among occupants is a common problem in built environments. Recent studies have investigated various physiological sensing and modeling approaches and demonstrated more robust thermal comfort prediction than the Predicted Mean Vote and participatory sensing methods. However, such physiological sensing approaches only work with iterative and passive Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) control schemas which can lead to problems including uncertainties in setpoint control outcomes and interruptions to building occupants. To address this critical limitation, this paper proposes a new paradigm named Human Embodied Autonomous Thermostat (HEAT) that considers human occupants as an embodiment of smart and connected thermostats where physiological measurements in form of facial skin temperature can be used to directly communicate with and control …