TileTrack: Capacitive human tracking using floor tiles

Accurate, simple and affordable methods for passive indoor tracking of human beings are still missing. In this article, we describe the development of an unobtrusive two-dimensional human positioning system based on low-frequency electric fields. The system´s operation is based on measuring the capacitance between multiple floor tiles and a receiving electrode. The presented system is invisible to the user and uses a single-chip solution to measure the capacitances. The implemented system is evaluated with two different types of receiving electrodes and the results are presented. With the used tiles, the system can locate a standing human with at least 15 cm accuracy and track a walking person with at least 41 cm accuracy. The update rate of the system is 10 Hz.