A Smart Fiber Floor for Indoor Target Localization

This article presents a proof-of-concept study for a smart fiber floor. The task of the smart floor is to create a floor pressure distribution map with an embedded fiber sensor array for indoor target localization. Among various potential applications, the authors are interested in building a floor-centric human-following system, in which the smart floor can be used to guide a robot to track a person of interest in a computationally efficient way. The key to such a smart floor is the deployment strategy of fiber sensors. Two aspects are important in developing this deployment strategy. One is the sensing efficiency, which is motivated by using the minimal amount of fiber sensors or reducing the amount of redundant fiber sensors. Another is the data efficiency in terms of the capability of data self-association. To address these two concerns, the authors developed labeled uniquely decipherable (LUD) code to specify the deployment configuration of fiber sensors. Compared with the standard UD code, the LUD code allows for exploring the use of heterogeneous target sensitivity of fiber sensors in further reducing the number of the required fiber sensors and offering the capability of data self-association. This article is part of a special issue on smart spaces.