Sensing floor

{{Short description|Floors with embedded sensors for analysis}}

A sensing floor is a floor with embedded sensors.

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, [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1120212.1120391 The magic carpet: physical sensing for immersive environments], CHI '97 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1997.Yu-Lin Shen, Chow-Shing Shin [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5290395/ Distributed Sensing Floor for an Intelligent Environment], IEEE Sensors Journal, December 2009, pp. 1673 –1678.Albrecht Schmidt, Martin Strohbach, Kristof van Laerhoven, Adrian Friday, Hans-Werner Gellersen, [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=647988.741476 Context Acquisition Based on Load Sensing], Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Ubiquitous Computing, UbiComp 2002.

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.

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 for human identification and continuous health diagnosis (either in domestic or hospital environments)
• Mapping of the environment for autonomous robotsMihai Andries, [https://hal.inria.fr/tel-01252938/ Object and human tracking, and robot control through a load sensing floor], PhD dissertation, Université de Lorraine, 2015. Chapter 7 on "Providing roadmaps for autonomous robotic navigation".
• Controller for interactive applications (as a MIDI music instrument, a games controller,The Active Gaming Company.

[http://www.the-agc.com/products/physical-therapy/lightspace-floor/ Lightspace floor] dance movement analysis,Prashant Srinivasan, David Birchfield, Gang Qian, Assegid Kidané, [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1178526 A pressure sensing floor for interactive media applications], Proceedings of the 2005 ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in computer entertainment technology, pp. 278--281, ACM 2005 etc.)

More than 30 distinct sensing floor prototypes have been developed between 1990 and 2015.Mihai Andries, [https://hal.inria.fr/tel-01252938/ Object and human tracking, and robot control through a load sensing floor], PhD dissertation, Université de Lorraine, 2015. Chapter 2 "Sensing floors: existing prototypes and related work" contains a comprehensive list of sensing floor prototypes.

Notable examples of sensing floors have been developed by Oracle,M.D. Addlesee, A. Jones, F. Livesey, F. Samaria [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/626980/ The ORL active floor [sensor system]], IEEE Personal Communications, 1997 MIT,Bruce Richardson, Krispin Leydon, Mikael Fernström, Joseph A. Paradiso, [https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.68.2026 Z-Tiles: building blocks for modular, pressure-sensing floorspaces], CHI, 2004 and Inria.Mihai Andries, Olivier Simonin, François Charpillet [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7302515/?arnumber=7302515 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,[http://www.gaitrite.com/surface.htm GAITRite sensing carpet] and the SensFloorChristl Lauterbach, Axel Steinhage, Axel Techmer, [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6198101/ Large-area wireless sensor system based on smart textiles], International Multi-Conference on Systems, Sygnals Devices, 2012).