Indoor Localization Method of Personnel Movement Based on Non-Contact Electrostatic Potential Measurements

Abstract

The indoor localization of people is the key to realizing “smart city” applications, such as smart homes, elderly care, and an energy-saving grid. The localization method based on electrostatic information is a passive label-free localization technique with a better balance of localization accuracy, system power consumption, privacy protection, and environmental friendliness. However, the physical information of each actual application scenario is different, resulting in the transfer function from the human electrostatic potential to the sensor signal not being unique, thus limiting the generality of this method. Therefore, this study proposed an indoor localization method based on on-site measured electrostatic signals and symbolic regression machine learning algorithms. A remote, non-contact human electrostatic potential sensor was designed and implemented, and a prototype test system was built. Indoor localization of moving people was achieved in a 5 m × 5 m space with an 80% positioning accuracy and a median error absolute value range of 0.4–0.6 m. This method achieved on-site calibration without requiring physical information about the actual scene. It has the advantages of low computational complexity and only a small amount of training data is required.