Use of an energy harvesting smart floor for indoor localization of people

The development of “intelligent” floors is a growing interest, but often the ensuing solutions involve high production costs as well as complicated installation and management. Aim of this paper is to propose a novel smart floor that makes use of an energy harvesting system in order to allow people localization and to track their movements in an indoor environment. The contribution starts from reviewing the state of the art of smart floor solutions, which are categorized according to the different applications they are addressed to. The system developed in this research is based on capacitive sensors that are mounted on a polymeric support and embedded between a bulk wooden base and floating parquet flooring. The paper outlines the detailed architecture of the proposed apparatus and reports the results of the preliminary test phase. The proposed solution is part of HDOMO, an Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) project aiming at the development of smart solutions for active aging.