Portable Wireless Sensors for Object Usage Sensing in the Home: Challenges and Practicalities

A low-cost kit of stick-on wireless sensors that transmit data indicating whenever various objects are being touched or used might aid ubiquitous computing research efforts on rapid prototyping, context-aware computing, and ultra-dense object sensing, among others. Ideally, the sensors would be small, easy-to-install, and affordable. The sensors would reliably recognize when specific objects are manipulated, despite vibrations produced by the usage of nearby objects and environmental noise. Finally, the sensors would operate continuously for several months, or longer. In this paper, we discuss the challenges and practical aspects associated with creating such "object usage" sensors. We describe the existing technologies used to recognize object usage and then present the design and evaluation of a new stick-on, wireless object usage sensor. The device uses (1) a simple classification rule tuned to differentiate real object usage from adjacent vibrations and noise in real-time...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: EUSAI
• Authors: Emmanuel Munguia Tapia, Stephen S. Intille, Kent Larson
• Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, EUSAI 2007, Object Usage, Sensors, Stick-on Wireless Sensors