A Mortise-Tenon Structured Capacitive Pressure Sensor Array Toward Large-Area Indoor Activity Monitoring

This letter proposed a large-scalable and quick-assembled capacitive pressure sensing floor using mortise and tenon structure of commercial wooden floors. The cost-efficient fabrication is enabled using the ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer (EVA) foam dielectric and copper tape electrodes. The influence of the dielectric layer thickness and electrode width on the sensing performances has been investigated, showing the highest sensitivity of 0.175% kPa(-1) and a low hysteresis error of 8.25% for the single sensing pixel within the human-floor contact pressure range. A 0.36 x 1.82 m(2) sensing floor containing 6 x 28 pixelated sensors is assembled based on seven floor tiles to demonstrate the detection of distinct pressure distributions during different exercises. The reported pressure sensing floor shows promising applications in indoor human activity monitoring.