I’m sure everyone is familiar with automated sliding doors. Those glass doors that slide open when a sensor mounted on top of the door detects movement.
Recently, i was stumped when i went to the basement food court at Sim Lim Square, walked up to the glass door and nothing happened. After a few seconds of blinking at the door to no avail, i noticed a plastic tab with the word “Press”. Ah…its no longer automated, but instead, manually triggered - which makes a lot of sense when you have a door located in a high pedestrian traffic area. This afternoon I was sitting outside TCC at Bugis Junction this afternoon, and saw for myself how often the automated glass doors slide open and closed because of human traffic.
Anyway, ever since that day at Sim Lim, i have noticed the plastic tab “Press” gadget in a few other places - Wisma Atria taxi stand entrance, and today at Bugis Junction TCC. Frankly, i don’t think its the most intuitive designed interface, so i thought about how to improve the user interface - why not, instead of a plastic tab, have a palm sized metal plate that has the imprint of a palm on the glass door. In that way, a person who sees it, will intuitively push (or so I think). After some thought, i realised that some people may end up thinking that these doors were push-open doors rather than sliding doors and break them trying to push it open.
So, I came up with some alternative ideas:
- Use a vision system that can detect shapes, and point it at an angle downwards so that if it detects an object against a pre-defined background that does not move, it activates the doors. This represents a person standing in front of the door, expecting it to open.
There are already systems like that, that can do this. Axis Communications (http://www.axis.com) sells camera systems that have software that detects motion against a predefined background. - Have a pressure mat/sensor embedded in the carpet in front of the sliding doors. Set it so that if there is sustained pressure on it for, say, 0.5 seconds, it activates the doors.
Each of the solutions above has some inherent challenge of its own. Can you think of an alternative solution?
