Proposal of an Information Delivery Method for Electronic Paper Signage Using Human Mobility as the Communication Medium

In environments where communication infrastructure is unstable, remotely updating Electronic Paper Signage (EPS) is difficult. This study proposes a method that leverages human mobility as a communication medium to disseminate content progressively among EPS units. Mobile devices such as smartphones and wearables connect to EPS via short-range links upon encounter and, based on bidirectional version comparison, update to the newer content. On the EPS side, power consumption is reduced by controlling scanning intervals. We implemented a prototype using M5Paper v1.1 and confirmed basic operations, including content handover and display updates. We also outline a future direction to minimize standby power by introducing wake-up mechanisms triggered by touch/proximity and energy harvesting using piezoelectric elements.