Towards Intelligent Environments: Human Sensing through Point Cloud

Abstract

''Society 5.0'' seeks to enhance well-being by integrating the Internet of Things to connect people, objects, and environments, which aims to gather and utilize data from the physical world in cyberspace fostering new values and knowledge sharing. It extends the concept of Cyber-Physical Systems by focusing on human-centric sensing and AI-driven analysis to capture and understand the nuances of human behaviors and their environments. To realize the concept, intelligent environments, focusing on creating sensor-enhanced spaces capable of recognizing and interpreting human behaviors and needs, are essential. To explore how we realize the intelligent environment, this paper highlights the current technologies and applications of human sensing and tracking that enables such intelligent environments.Specifically, it introduces the development and application of LiDAR-based human sensing and tracking technologies, including the Hitonavi and Hitonavi-µ systems, designed for multi-person tracking in extensive areas and for enabling person detection and activity recognition on edge devices, respectively. Moreover, the services and applications of the introduced methodologies to smart buildings, shopping malls, and elderly care have been explained to showcase their potential to enhance safety, convenience, and understanding of human behavior within intelligent environment. Throughout this paper, we present our vision for creating a reliable intelligent environment, which is fundamentally supported by sophisticated human sensing technologies.