Capacitive sensing with a fluorescent lamp

This work presents a modified fluorescent lamp that can be used as a capacitive sensing system. The lamp sensor measures changes in the electric fields emitted from the fluorescent bulbs in order to deduce the presence and motion of conductive and dielectric objects below the lamp. The prototype lamp sensor demonstrated a detection range of 10 feet for the presence and motion of a human below the lamp. Potential applications of the lamp sensor include proximity detection, motion sensing, security monitoring, activity level monitoring for power management and control and metal or dangerous substance detection.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Cooley, John Jacob

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Steven B. Leeb and Al-Thaddeus Avestruz.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/41255

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/41255