RF-Wear: Towards Wearable Everyday Skeleton Tracking Using Passive RFIDs

Haojian Jin, Jingxian Wang, Zhijian Yang, Swarun Kumar, Jason I. Hong

Abstract: We introduce RF-Wear1, a low-cost, washable and wearable solution to track movements of a user's body using passive RFIDs embedded in their clothing. RF-Wear processes wireless signals reflected off these tags to a compact single-antenna RFID reader in the user's pocket. In doing so, RF-Wear enables a first-of-its-kind skeleton tracking mechanism that is lightweight and convenient for day-to-day use, without relying on external infrastructure. We implement and evaluate a prototype of RF-Wear on commercial RFID readers and tags and demonstrate its performance in skeleton tracking. Our results reveal a mean error of 8-12° in tracking angles at joints that rotate along one degree-of-freedom, and 21°- azimuth, 8°- elevation for joints supporting two degrees-of-freedom.