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These days, just about everything is smart.
Researchers at the University of Manchester in the UK even foresee an
era when your home is equipped with a smart carpet, reports New
Scientist.
It might initially seem like an utterly superfluous development. A
smartphone? Yes. A smart thermostat? Okay, why not. But a smart carpet?
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Here’s how it works. The carpet’s underlay contains optical fibers
strung throughout. When someone steps on the carpet, these optical
fibers distort, and sensors at the carpet’s edge send signals to a
computer. The computer in turn can analyze the types of pressure applied
to the carpet.
But why on earth would you want such a thing? Well, for one thing,
consider the homes of the elderly who insist on living independently. A
carpet programmed to detect a sudden fall might alert emergency
responders were someone old and frail to take a tumble.
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Another application could turn your carpet into your physical therapist,
in a way. After having the carpet in place over a long period of time,
it could learn your walking pattern and begin to detect
anomalies--perhaps you have a habit of putting just a tad more weight on
one leg than the other, for instance. With enough data (and, presumably,
a real live physical therapist to help interpret it), you could begin to
predict mobility problems--and hopefully correct them. This idea makes
the smart carpet team part of a larger trend of commercializing physical
therapeutic technology with the help of sensors in unlikely places (see
“Get Smart Shoes”).
There’s one final application, again for once the carpet has
familiarized itself with your gait. If it knows you have a certain way
of walking, and at 3 AM it suddenly detects an unusual footfall by the
living room window, the smart carpet could infer the presence of an
intruder, acting as a sort of fibrous alarm system. The system could
also detect environmental threats, like chemical spills or fires.
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There appears to be no word yet on the cost of the smart carpet, or on
plans to commercialize it.
The smart carpet is the brainchild, in part, of Manchester’s Dr.
Patricia Scully, whose expertise is in optical sensing, photonic
devices, and “polymer optoelectronics,” among other things. According to
her faculty page, Dr. Scully has also worked on low-cost, rugged sensors
using polymer optical fiber, femtosecond lasers, and measurement
techniques for fuel cell systems. |