POISE: An Inexpensive, Low-Power Location Sensor Based on Electrostatics

Pervasive computing research has highlighted a need for location systems and input devices that are easy to deploy ubiquitously, are inexpensive, reliable, and practically invisible. This paper describes a novel tracking platform that attempts to meet all of these goals. The system exploits the static charge that naturally accumulates with movement through typical environments to create an inexpensive system that has potential both as a passive location system and as an input device. We demonstrate the physical principles, develop hardware and software to reliably detect interactions, and extensively evaluate a prototype implementation. We find the prototype to have a low false negative rate and a zero false positive rate. The power draw lies in the milliwatt-range and the cost per room is significantly lower than comparable systems