STRUCTURES AS SENSORS: Inferring Within

We have been working on the “within” aspect through indoor human tracking and characterization using building as a sensor. We are building a system to sense, identify, localize, and characterize persons’ gait pattern to understand various user information (e.g., indoor human traffic flow, their activity level, their health status, mood, etc.) on a fine-grained level with non-dedicated building vibration monitoring sensors (user-aware).

Our system utilizes high resolution and high frequency vibration sensor data and develops statistical signal processing and machine learning techniques to analyze the data. We are collaborating with elder care facilities in Pittsburgh (Vincentian Collaborative System and Baptist Homes Society), to deploy and carry out the work in the context of elderly healthcare, where the building structure will recognize individual resident’s health status (e.g., balance, fatigue, ability to walk, etc.) through gait-induced structural vibration.