LiDAR Visitor Tracking
COVID-era contactless interaction system. From single-sensor prototype to 53-sensor installation covering 1400 sqm.
Role: Original system development
About the Project
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, touch interaction and headphones were banned in museums. ZKM needed a way for artworks to respond to visitor presence without physical contact. With the museum technology team I developed a single-sensor LiDAR prototype that used a wall-mounted sensor to detect visitors and control audio playback: sound fades in when someone approaches and out when they leave. The first deployments were in the “Negativer Raum” exhibition and the “Writing the History of the Future” collection presentation.
In 2022, Daniel Heiss and I presented the sensors internally at ZKM. Bernd Lintermann (ZKM HertzLabor) saw the potential and scaled the concept into a full multi-sensor tracking system with distributed architecture, calibration tooling, and advanced tracking algorithms. I continued to drive feature requirements, develop interfaces between the tracking system and artworks, and handle production deployment.
Scaling
- 2020, Single-sensor prototype: my original contactless interaction system, solving the immediate COVID problem for audio-based artworks
- 2022, Multi-sensor system: Bernd Lintermann’s expansion into a distributed tracking network with seamless visitor handoff between sensor zones
- 2023, Renaissance 3.0: 53 sensors covering 1,400 sqm
Technical Details
The sensors are compact (~4 cm), wall-mounted LiDAR modules using infrared laser (eye-safe, invisible) rotating at 10Hz to measure distances. With a 9m range and 90cm mounting height, they are a cheap tracking solution. The software runs on Linux and supports distributed architectures with Raspberry Pi or Rock Pi S nodes transmitting sensor data via UDP to a central server. Tracking data is distributed via OSC, WebSockets, MQTT, and InfluxDB.
Scientific Presentation
Bernd Lintermann presented the system at the Digital Museum Conference 2024 at the Belvedere Vienna (“Ein LiDAR-basiertes Werkzeug zur räumlichen Analyse der Ausstellungsnutzung”). The software was released as open source in November 2023 through ZKM’s GitHub organization.