Human tracking using electric fields

In this paper we describe a simple, cheap, and unobtrusive demo system that can track multiple persons with 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 system was provided for hands-on evaluation for conference attendees with a 3.0 times 1.8 m floor space. The position and the track of the persons walking on the floor were projected on a screen. The floor of the demo system is divided to two different sections that are built of two different sizes of floor tiles to show how the tile size affects the positioning accuracy and the update rate of the system.