The Capacitive Chair

Modern office work often consists of spending long hours in a sitting position. This can cause a number of health-related issues, including chronic back pain. Ergonomic sitting requires suitably adjusted chairs and switching through a variety of different sitting positions throughout the day. Smart furniture can support this positive behavior, by recognizing poses and activities and giving suitable feedback to the occupant. In this work we present the Capacitive Chair. A number of capacitive proximity sensors are integrated into a regular office chair and can sense various physiological parameters, ranging from pose to activity levels or breathing rate recognition. We discuss a suitable sensor layouts and processing methods that enable detecting activity levels, posture and breathing rate. The system is evaluated in two user studies that test the activity recognition throughout a work week and the recognition rate of different poses.