MIT develops 'magic' carpet that can detect if person is doing sit-ups or other exercises

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed an'intelligent' carpet that can sense human movement and poses without using cameras, opening up a whole new world in both gaming and health care. At this week's Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, a team from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) demonstrated a 36' by 2' mat than can extrapolates the sitter's posture, movement and relationship to the ground in a 3D model. If a user steps onto the mat and performs a sit up, the system can produce an image of a figure doing a sit up. The mat is trained on synchronized tactile and visual data, such as video footage and a heatmap of a volunteer doing a sit up or pushup. Researchers at MIT are working on a mat embedded with thousands of sensors that can detect pressure from feet, limbs and other body parts.