A Pressure Sensing Trail

The Tactonic floor mat is the pressure sensing technology that I use in my arch index research. It captures real-time pressure images so that we can get foot pressure and further monitor the variances of the pressure along movements.

Figure 1. One of the major models that we use in the lab

Figure 2. One of the major models that we use in the lab

There are a few models of the Tactonic mat, but the one I used the most measures 2 feet by 1 foot. In the arch index research, I use two of them since I only need a clear and integrated foot pressure image when participants are standing in a standardized position. However, the floor mat is also capable of working together with other pieces when you tile them up to cover a room or to form a trail.

Figure 3. 12 feet by 1 foot trail setup

This is a demo of 12 feet by 2 feet trail setup which consists of 12 2 feet x 1 foot floor mats. It is very useful if you want to set up a gait analysis. Besides, we have tried 24-mat layout such as 6 by 4, and 12 by 2, they all worked in a satisfying performance with a frame rate at 30 fps. We also have this Python program which can visualize the recording files from the trail. And you can use the slider to locate an arbitrary frame in the time sequence.