Infrared Sensor Grid for Human Trajectory Tracking
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current systems lack the capability to effectively analyze human movements and behaviors within environments, such as stores, to optimize operations and understand traffic patterns, which is crucial for businesses and assisted living providers.
Innovation Solution
A sensor system that detects infrared energy from living beings, projects temperature onto a grid, determines serial changes, and calculates trajectories, using thermopile sensors and a mesh network to track movements, speed, and calorie expenditure without requiring personal biometric data.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If businesses use traditional counting methods to track customer entry and exit, then they can obtain basic occupancy data, but they cannot analyze customer movements, trajectories and activities within the store
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces traditional mechanical counting systems with infrared thermal sensing technology. The system uses infrared sensors to detect thermal signatures of customers, automatically tracking their movements, trajectories and activities without requiring manual counting or complex mechanical devices. This substitution enables comprehensive movement analysis while keeping the system relatively simple and non-intrusive.
2Loss of information
If assisted living providers want to analyze tenants' spatial and temporal movement data to assess well-being, then they can obtain comprehensive behavior information, but they must handle complex data processing requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs automatic data processing and analysis without requiring manual intervention. The infrared sensors continuously monitor and automatically calculate movement patterns, trajectory metrics, and behavioral indicators. The system self-generates comprehensive reports on spatial and temporal movement data, enabling providers to assess tenant well-being through automated analytics rather than manual data collection and processing.
3Measurement precision
If the system tracks detailed trajectories and activities of living beings, then it can provide comprehensive location and behavior analysis, but it requires sophisticated sensor networks and processing algorithms
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the monitoring area into multiple detection zones or grid segments. Each infrared sensor monitors specific segments, and the system reconstructs complete trajectories by combining data from multiple segments. This segmentation approach enables precise trajectory detection while distributing the processing load across simpler individual sensor units rather than requiring a single complex centralized system.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The system provides real-time location, trajectory, and behavior analysis, enabling businesses to optimize operations and assisted living providers to assess resident well-being, by accurately tracking movements and environmental interactions.
Implementation Method 1
The sensor system detects infrared (IR) energy from a living being moving in an environment, determines a temperature of the living being based on IR energy data
Implementation Method 2
The plurality of sensors may be thermopile sensors
Data Source
AI summary
The system is configured to locate, track and/or analyze activities of living beings in an environment. The system does not require the input of personal biometric data. The sensor system detects infrared (IR) energy from a living being moving in an environment, determines a temperature of the living being based on IR energy data of the IR energy, projects the temperature onto a grid having sequential pixels, determines serial changes of the temperature in the sequential pixels and determines a trajectory of the living being based on the serial changes of the temperature in the sequential pixels.