Object identification and localization by smart floors

The effort to utilize simpler and hereby cheaper robotic devices regarding sensors led to creating a concept of intelligent space (IS), which is equipped with spatially dispersed sensors offering to a robot needed information. Smart floor (SF) is one element, which IS can consist of. In our paper we deal with design of a simple SF utilizing the technology of passive RFID tags, which a basic components of SF. RFID is a well known and proved technology with some significant advantages as cheapness and reliability. From this reason we proposed two basic grids of RFID tags covering a given floor enabling a very simple construction of SF. This approach differs from other designs, where only significant places and objects were fitted with mostly active tags. However, technological advance and decreasing prices enable us to place large amounts of very cheap passive tags and hereby to localize a given object very simply and precisely, too. In the paper experiments with the proposed RFID grids are described and evaluated, which confirmed advantages of this SF design.