Invisible human sensing in smart living environments using capacitive sensors

Smart living environments aim at supporting their inhabitants in daily tasks by detecting their needs and dynamically reacting accordingly. This generally requires several sensor devices, whose acquired data is combined to assess the current situation. Capturing the full range of situations necessitates many sensors. Often cameras and motion detectors are used, which are rather large and difficult to hide in the environment. Capacitive sensors measure changes in the electric field and can be operated through any non-conductive material. They gained popularity in research in the last few years, with some systems becoming available on the market. In this work we will introduce how those sensors can be used to sense humans in smart living environments, providing applications in situation recognition and human-computer interaction. We will discuss opportunities and challenges of capacitive sensing and give an outlook on future scenarios.