Smart Capacitive Sensing Floors for Smarter Homes
Description: Imagine a world where your home knows exactly where you are, ascertains that you are going to the fridge for a midnight snack and turns on the night light. Rescue personnel know exactly how many individuals have evacuated a residence during an emergency, and the HVAC system operates more efficiently by sensing who is where. The floor detects a body lying motionless and instantly alerts hospitals and relatives to a fall. The floor tracks an occupants’ footsteps, calculates that an occupant’s walking pattern has changed and alerts the family doctor to investigate early onset of a disease like Alzheimer’s or progressing frailty increasing the risk of suffering a fall. Associate Professor Fakhrul Alam of Massey University is teaming up with scientists and engineers from Scion, Resene, and three other NZ universities to make these scenarios possible. Over the next three years the team will develop an innovative Smart Floor capable of making homes and aged-care facilities safer. The Smart Floor operates by measuring changes in capacitive coupling between the human body and the floor, analogous to how your finger interacts with a touchscreen. Processing the sensed data from the floor using powerful machine learning algorithms allows the data to be used to track movement, interpret body positioning, and even differentiate between people by assigning unique characteristics to each occupant, all in a seamless privacy-maintaining way with no cameras or wearable devices.
Amount: NZD 1,000,000
Funding type: research
Funder scheme: 2022 Endeavour Fund - Smart Ideas
Start date: 2022-10-01
End date: 2026-03-31
Institution: Auckland University of Technology
Funded outputs count: 0
Funder award ID: MAUX2206
OpenAlex ID: G8955230758