Best Sensor Type for Fast-Response Pressure Pad to Detect Person Standing or Jumping

I'm trying to build a weight or pressure sensor to detect if a person is standing on a pad (or pair of pads). I'm not looking for precise weight sensing, just to detect if someone is present. I need to respond fairly quickly as the application will have timing to hundredths of a second. The system will also need to be able to withstand a good amount of pressure as the person may be jumping on or off the pads/sensor. Any help will be greatly appreciated!

How about making the platform detect the person though an optical or capacitive sensor instead of a traditional weight sensor (aka load cell based on a strain gauge).

You could make the platform a giant isolated plate and use an off-the-shelf touch sensor IC's to do the fancy analog processing required to detect the change in capacitance.

Your question is very broad. Have you looked at load cells? What about alternate means of determining is someone is present as Joe mentioned? There are many others too, like a little deflection and a microswitch, deflection measured with a LVDT, etc.

There are many possible ways to do this. It's hard to answer your question without knowing more about where you are in this development and what specifically you are stuck on.