A portable three-dimensional LIDAR-based system for long-term and wide-area people behavior measurement

TLDR

Measuring and analyzing people behavior is essential for designing interactive systems. The study presents a portable 3D LIDAR‑based system for measuring people behavior. The system is carried by an observer who follows subjects, keeping them in the LIDAR’s field of view while the device estimates its pose in a 3D map and tracks the targets, as demonstrated in a field test with caregivers in a hospital. The system enables long‑term, wide‑area behavior measurement, and preliminary analysis of caregiver actions led to empirical rules for designing attendant robot behavior.

Abstract

It is important to measure and analyze people behavior to design systems which interact with people. This article describes a portable people behavior measurement system using a three-dimensional LIDAR. In this system, an observer carries the system equipped with a three-dimensional Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) and follows persons to be measured while keeping them in the sensor view. The system estimates the sensor pose in a three-dimensional environmental map and tracks the target persons. It enables long-term and wide-area people behavior measurements which are hard for existing people tracking systems. As a field test, we recorded the behavior of professional caregivers attending elderly persons with dementia in a hospital. The preliminary analysis of the behavior reveals how the caregivers decide the attending position while checking the surrounding people and environment. Based on the analysis result, empirical rules to design the behavior of attendant robots are proposed.