A sensing floor is a
floor
A floor is the bottom surface of a room or vehicle. Floors vary from simple dirt in a cave to many layered surfaces made with modern technology. Floors may be stone, wood, bamboo, metal or any other material that can support the expected load ...
with embedded
sensor
A sensor is a device that produces an output signal for the purpose of sensing a physical phenomenon.
In the broadest definition, a sensor is a device, module, machine, or subsystem that detects events or changes in its environment and sends ...
s.
Depending on their construction, these floors are either monobloc (e.g. structures made of a single frame, carpets).
[Joseph Paradiso, Craig Abler, Kai-yuh Hsiao, Matthew Reynolds]
The magic carpet: physical sensing for immersive environments
CHI '97 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1997.
or modular (e.g. tiled floors, floors made of stripes of sensors).
The first sensing floor prototypes were developed in the 1990s, mainly for human gait analysis.
Such floors are usually used as a source of sensing information for an
ambient intelligence
In computing, ambient intelligence (AmI) refers to electronic environments that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people. Ambient intelligence was a projection on the future of consumer electronics, telecommunications and comput ...
.
Depending on the type of sensors employed, sensing floors can measure load (pressure), proximity (to detect, track, and recognize humans), as well as the magnetic field (for detecting metallic objects like robots using magnetometers).
Sensing floors have a variety of usages:
*
Gait analysis
Gait analysis is the systematic study of animal locomotion, more specifically the study of human motion, using the eye and the brain of observers, augmented by instrumentation for measuring body movements, body mechanics, and the activity of the ...
for human identification and continuous health diagnosis (either in domestic or hospital environments)
*
Mapping of the environment for autonomous robots
* Controller for interactive applications (as a MIDI music instrument,
a games controller, dance movement analysis, etc.)
More than 30 distinct sensing floor prototypes have been developed between 1990 and 2015.
Notable examples of sensing floors have been developed by Oracle,
[M.D. Addlesee, A. Jones, F. Livesey, F. Samari]
The ORL active floor [sensor system]
IEEE Personal Communications, 1997 MIT,
[Bruce Richardson, Krispin Leydon, Mikael Fernström, Joseph A. Paradiso]
Z-Tiles: building blocks for modular, pressure-sensing floorspaces
CHI, 2004 and Inria.
[Mihai Andries, Olivier Simonin, François Charpille]
Localization of Humans, Objects, and Robots Interacting on Load-Sensing Floors
IEEE Sensors Journal, Volume 16, Issue 4, Feb, 2016
As of 2015, few sensing floors are available as commercial products, mainly targeting healthcare facilities (e.g. the GAITRite surface pressure sensing floor, and the SensFloor
[Christl Lauterbach, Axel Steinhage, Axel Techmer]
Large-area wireless sensor system based on smart textiles
International Multi-Conference on Systems, Sygnals Devices, 2012).
Citations
{{reflist, 40em
Sensors
Robotics
User interface techniques
Security technology