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Intelligent Systems Lab Project: FLOOR

Participants

Supervisors

Motivation

Application Szenario

The SensFloor® helps to track people inside the apartment, to know where they are and possibly adjust the activity of other sensors. Multiple modules can be combined and allow to track the staying frequency in specific areas. All incoming sensor data should be filterable by only passing a room id or name to the program. Other scenarios which could be established with the floor are for example: Security (Intrusion detection), Safety (Detect unconscious people), Input device (Use gestures or as a playing field). Depending on the scenario, the capacitive floor can be an ambient sensor which does not require a specific user attention or it could be used consciously as an input device. An important aspect is the seamless integration into the apartment environment to enable interaction with other sensors and actuators.

Objectives

The project goals are to develop

Description

Setup

In our project setup we worked with different patches which had a size of 2x4 modules. Each module consists of 8 segments which measure an individual capacity value. In the middle of each module a wireless transmitter is embedded which sends the measurement to a wireless receiver. The receiver is connected to a PC via USB and is able to connect several modules.

Segments and Modules

Architecture

The figure shows the external components, the developed software components and the communication channels between them. One of the requirements was to support a 24/7 service and plug-and-play of the individual components. Therefore we have chosen RSB as the communication bus. This also supported the integration in the CSRA.

Architecture

Components

The FLOOR-BASE is the interface between the wireless receiver (FLOOR-Gateway) and the RSB. It parses the incoming serial data, encapsulates it in our RST packet and publishes it on the bus.

The FLOOR-VIEW displays the current activation of the SensFloor® modules. The component listens to the bus and visualizes the different capacity values with fluent colour intensities. The view is built up dynamically, so the positions of the modules are perceived automatically without any user effort. Once all modules were recognized you can save the module-setup as a schematic for later use. To include the functionalities in other components, they were separated as a dynamic library (FLOOR-LIB).

The FLOOR-SIM offers the ability to simulate incoming Floor-RSB-Messages, without the necessity of actual hardware modules. The area of modules the user wants to simulate, can be modified on-the-fly or saved and loaded via the same schematics, used in the FLOOR-VIEW. In the actual simulation the modules can activated or deactivated by simple mouse clicks, which results in outgoing RSB-Messages, containing updated capacity information.

The keyboard-emulator was developed to translate user actions on the SensFloor® into key-events to be used for various purposes, for example as a game input device. By including the FLOOR-LIB into the emulator schematics can be loaded and the capacity of the modules can be visualized. Users can select several segments and assign them to a specific key-event. This key-event is emitted if activation of the selected segement(s) is measured. A list of key-assignments can be saved and loaded.

The maze-app was developed to test the SensFloor® and evaluate how accurately one could move around on it. Therefore, when the user starts a game with the maze-app, it shows the user a path from one side of the SensFloor® to the other for 5 seconds. After that, the path disappears and the user has to walk this on path and is not allowed to step somewhere aside. As long the the user stays on the path, the segments turn green, otherwise red.

The dance-floor app is a gaming app for entertainment purposes. Hereby the FLOOR is used as an input device where the user has to tap on the right modules as the game demands it. It's purpose was mainly to explore the RSB Java implementation and the cross platform/environment abilities of the RSB.

Results of the First and Second Term (Winter Term 2014/15 and Summer Term 2015)

Overall the project was very successful. The planning phase in the beginning helped to establish a clear software architecture. The components could be developed independently in small teams. The following overview shows a short summary of the results:
The video shows the setup, the different software components that were developed and a few demo scenarios.

Discussion and Conclusion

Performance measurements

Setup

TRAILSETUP

Evaluation

TRAILRESULTS

Many possible reasons for a delay

Outlook

There are several subjects one could approve, for example:

References:

SensFloor® is a product from FutureShape.
Audiosurf 2 was developed by Audiosurf, LLC, Based in Seattle, WA.