Framework to ascertain effectiveness of Ultra-Wideband for In-home device control

A new avatar of Ultra-Wideband (UWB) has emerged in recent times that provides users with reliable ranging measurements. In this paper we present an evaluation framework to ascertain the effectiveness of UWB for in-home device control, and help in improving the user experience. In the context of in-home device control, we chose a set of three use cases to explore challenges and evaluate value of using UWB for detecting the user intent based on the distance and angle measurements obtained by performing ranging. In this paper, we describe in detail the system architecture of our evaluation framework and the main component of the framework - User intent detection algorithm designed to improve the efficacy of UWB ranging technology for in-home device control. The user intent detection algorithm allows plugging in various kinds of filters and feedback/tuning mechanisms. We conducted evaluation of our user intent detection algorithm by plugging in Kalman filter and moving average filter, typically used in indoor positioning systems. We demonstrated the chosen use cases in lab setup and affirmed the effectiveness of UWB for in-home device control. Results reveal that our user intent detection algorithm reduces false positives considerably compared to plain UWB ranging measurements for triggering action and improves the effectiveness of UWB making the user experience more intuitive.