Design and implementation of seat occupancy detection system

Abstract

Location of appropriate seats in seating areas of theaters remains a significant challenge that patrons of these enterprises face. There is therefore, the need for seat occupancy monitoring system to provide readily accessible seat occupancy information to clients and management of these halls. This paper presents the design and implementation of a low cost seat occupancy detection and display system which is capable of monitoring seat occupancy in halls efficiently.  The system uses capacitive seat sensors which is designed based on the loading mode technology. It detects the presence of a human occupant using a single electrode. Occupancy data is relayed to a WiFi-enabled microcontroller unit which processes the data and wirelessly transfers the processed data to a central base station over a local area network for graphical and numerical display. Commands are also transferred from the base station to the microcontroller units when needed. Theoretical and empirical results show that the system is able to achieve seat occupancy monitoring accurately, neatly and cost effectively.

Keywords: Capacitive sensing, seat occupancy, sensor cluster, microstrip transmission line, Wi-Fi