1,059 research outputs found
Toward a unified PNT, Part 1: Complexity and context: Key challenges of multisensor positioning
The next generation of navigation and positioning systems must provide greater accuracy and reliability in a range of challenging environments to meet the needs of a variety of mission-critical applications. No single navigation technology is robust enough to meet these requirements on its own, so a multisensor solution is required. Known environmental features, such as signs, buildings, terrain height variation, and magnetic anomalies, may or may not be available for positioning. The system could be stationary, carried by a pedestrian, or on any type of land, sea, or air vehicle. Furthermore, for many applications, the environment and host behavior are subject to change. A multi-sensor solution is thus required. The expert knowledge problem is compounded by the fact that different modules in an integrated navigation system are often supplied by different organizations, who may be reluctant to share necessary design information if this is considered to be intellectual property that must be protected
An indoor navigation architecture using variable data sources for blind and visually impaired persons
Contrary to outdoor positioning and navigation
systems, there isn’t a counterpart global solution for indoor
environments. Usually, the deployment of an indoor positioning
system must be adapted case by case, according to the
infrastructure and the objective of the localization. A particularly
delicate case is related with persons who are blind or visually
impaired. A robust and easy to use indoor navigation solution
would be extremely useful, but this would also be particularly
difficult to develop, given the special requirements of the system
that would have to be more accurate and user friendly than a
general solution. This paper presents a contribute to this subject,
by proposing a hybrid indoor positioning system adaptable to the
surrounding indoor structure, and dealing with different types of
signals to increase accuracy. This would permit lower the
deployment costs, since it could be done gradually, beginning
with the likely existing Wi-Fi infrastructure to get a fairy
accuracy up to a high accuracy using visual tags and NFC tags
when necessary and possible.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Evaluating indoor positioning systems in a shopping mall : the lessons learned from the IPIN 2018 competition
The Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN) conference holds an annual competition in which indoor localization systems from different research groups worldwide are evaluated empirically. The objective of this competition is to establish a systematic evaluation methodology with rigorous metrics both for real-time (on-site) and post-processing (off-site) situations, in a realistic environment unfamiliar to the prototype developers. For the IPIN 2018 conference, this competition was held on September 22nd, 2018, in Atlantis, a large shopping mall in Nantes (France). Four competition tracks (two on-site and two off-site) were designed. They consisted of several 1 km routes traversing several floors of the mall. Along these paths, 180 points were topographically surveyed with a 10 cm accuracy, to serve as ground truth landmarks, combining theodolite measurements, differential global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and 3D scanner systems. 34 teams effectively competed. The accuracy score corresponds to the third quartile (75th percentile) of an error metric that combines the horizontal positioning error and the floor detection. The best results for the on-site tracks showed an accuracy score of 11.70 m (Track 1) and 5.50 m (Track 2), while the best results for the off-site tracks showed an accuracy score of 0.90 m (Track 3) and 1.30 m (Track 4). These results showed that it is possible to obtain high accuracy indoor positioning solutions in large, realistic environments using wearable light-weight sensors without deploying any beacon. This paper describes the organization work of the tracks, analyzes the methodology used to quantify the results, reviews the lessons learned from the competition and discusses its future
Indoor navigation for the visually impaired : enhancements through utilisation of the Internet of Things and deep learning
Wayfinding and navigation are essential aspects of independent living that heavily rely on the sense of vision. Walking in a complex building requires knowing exact location to find a suitable path to the desired destination, avoiding obstacles and monitoring orientation and movement along the route. People who do not have access to sight-dependent information, such as that provided by signage, maps and environmental cues, can encounter challenges in achieving these tasks independently. They can rely on assistance from others or maintain their independence by using assistive technologies and the resources provided by smart environments. Several solutions have adapted technological innovations to combat navigation in an indoor environment over the last few years. However, there remains a significant lack of a complete solution to aid the navigation requirements of visually impaired (VI) people. The use of a single technology cannot provide a solution to fulfil all the navigation difficulties faced. A hybrid solution using Internet of Things (IoT) devices and deep learning techniques to discern the patterns of an indoor environment may help VI people gain confidence to travel independently. This thesis aims to improve the independence and enhance the journey of VI people in an indoor setting with the proposed framework, using a smartphone. The thesis proposes a novel framework, Indoor-Nav, to provide a VI-friendly path to avoid obstacles and predict the user s position. The components include Ortho-PATH, Blue Dot for VI People (BVIP), and a deep learning-based indoor positioning model. The work establishes a novel collision-free pathfinding algorithm, Orth-PATH, to generate a VI-friendly path via sensing a grid-based indoor space. Further, to ensure correct movement, with the use of beacons and a smartphone, BVIP monitors the movements and relative position of the moving user. In dark areas without external devices, the research tests the feasibility of using sensory information from a smartphone with a pre-trained regression-based deep learning model to predict the user s absolute position. The work accomplishes a diverse range of simulations and experiments to confirm the performance and effectiveness of the proposed framework and its components. The results show that Indoor-Nav is the first type of pathfinding algorithm to provide a novel path to reflect the needs of VI people. The approach designs a path alongside walls, avoiding obstacles, and this research benchmarks the approach with other popular pathfinding algorithms. Further, this research develops a smartphone-based application to test the trajectories of a moving user in an indoor environment
Sensor fusion of IMU and BLE using a well-condition triangle approach for BLE positioning
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesGPS has been a de-facto standard for outdoor positioning. For indoor positioning different
systems exist. But there is no general solution to fit all situations. A popular choice
among service provider is BLE-based IPS. BLE-has low cost, low power consumption,
and tit is are compatible with newer smartphones. These factors make it suitable for mass
market applications with an estimated market of 10 billion USD by 2020. Although, BLEbased
IPS have advantages over its counterparts, it has not solved the position accuracy
problem yet. More research is needed to meet the position accuracy required for indoor
LBS. In this thesis, two ways for accuracy improvement were tested i) a new algorithm for
BLE-based IPS was proposed and ii) fusion of BLE position estimates with IMU position
estimates was implemented. The first way exploits a concept from control survey called
well-conditioned triangle. Theoretically, a well-conditioned triangle is an equilateral triangle
but for in practice, triangles whose angles are greater than 30° and less than 120°
are considered well-conditioned. Triangles which do not satisfy well-condition are illconditioned.
An estimated position has the least error if the geometry from which it is estimated
satisfy well-condition. Ill-conditioned triangle should not be used for position estimation.
The proposed algorithm checked for well-condition among the closest detected
beacons and output estimates only when the beacons geometry satisfied well-condition.
The proposed algorithm was compared with weighted centroid (WC) algorithm. Proposed
algorithm did not improve on the accuracy but the variance in error was highly reduced.
The second way tested was fusion of BLE and IMU using Kálmán filter. Fusion generally
gives better results but a noteworthy result from fusion was that the position estimates
during turns were accurate. When used separately, both BLE and IMU estimates showed
errors in turns. Fusion with IMU improved the accuracy. More research is required to improve
accuracy of BLE-based IPS. Reproducibility self-assessment (https://osf.io/j97zp/):
2, 2, 2, 1, 2 (input data, prepossessing, methods, computational environment, results)
Low-Cost Indoor Localisation Based on Inertial Sensors, Wi-Fi and Sound
The average life expectancy has been increasing in the last decades, creating the need for
new technologies to improve the quality of life of the elderly. In the Ambient Assisted
Living scope, indoor location systems emerged as a promising technology capable of sup porting the elderly, providing them a safer environment to live in, and promoting their
autonomy. Current indoor location technologies are divided into two categories, depend ing on their need for additional infrastructure. Infrastructure-based solutions require
expensive deployment and maintenance. On the other hand, most infrastructure-free
systems rely on a single source of information, being highly dependent on its availability.
Such systems will hardly be deployed in real-life scenarios, as they cannot handle the
absence of their source of information. An efficient solution must, thus, guarantee the
continuous indoor positioning of the elderly.
This work proposes a new room-level low-cost indoor location algorithm. It relies
on three information sources: inertial sensors, to reconstruct users’ trajectories; environ mental sound, to exploit the unique characteristics of each home division; and Wi-Fi,
to estimate the distance to the Access Point in the neighbourhood. Two data collection
protocols were designed to resemble a real living scenario, and a data processing stage
was applied to the collected data. Then, each source was used to train individual Ma chine Learning (including Deep Learning) algorithms to identify room-level positions.
As each source provides different information to the classification, the data were merged
to produce a more robust localization. Three data fusion approaches (input-level, early,
and late fusion) were implemented for this goal, providing a final output containing
complementary contributions from all data sources.
Experimental results show that the performance improved when more than one source
was used, attaining a weighted F1-score of 81.8% in the localization between seven home
divisions. In conclusion, the evaluation of the developed algorithm shows that it can
achieve accurate room-level indoor localization, being, thus, suitable to be applied in
Ambient Assisted Living scenarios.O aumento da esperança média de vida nas últimas décadas, criou a necessidade de desenvolvimento de tecnologias que permitam melhorar a qualidade de vida dos idosos.
No âmbito da Assistência à Autonomia no DomicÃlio, sistemas de localização indoor têm
emergido como uma tecnologia promissora capaz de acompanhar os idosos e as suas atividades, proporcionando-lhes um ambiente seguro e promovendo a sua autonomia. As
tecnologias de localização indoor atuais podem ser divididas em duas categorias, aquelas
que necessitam de infrastruturas adicionais e aquelas que não. Sistemas dependentes de
infrastrutura necessitam de implementação e manutenção que são muitas vezes dispendiosas. Por outro lado, a maioria das soluções que não requerem infrastrutura, dependem
de apenas uma fonte de informação, sendo crucial a sua disponibilidade. Um sistema que
não consegue lidar com a falta de informação de um sensor dificilmente será implementado em cenários reais. Uma solução eficiente deverá assim garantir o acompanhamento
contÃnuo dos idosos.
A solução proposta consiste no desenvolvimento de um algoritmo de localização indoor de baixo custo, baseando-se nas seguintes fontes de informação: sensores inerciais,
capazes de reconstruir a trajetória do utilizador; som, explorando as caracterÃsticas dis tintas de cada divisão da casa; e Wi-Fi, responsável pela estimativa da distância entre o
ponto de acesso e o smartphone. Cada fonte sensorial, extraÃda dos sensores incorpora dos no dispositivo, foi, numa primeira abordagem, individualmente otimizada através de
algoritmos de Machine Learning (incluindo Deep Learning). Como os dados das diversas
fontes contêm informação diferente acerca das mesmas caracterÃsticas do sistema, a sua
fusão torna a classificação mais informada e robusta. Com este objetivo, foram implementadas três abordagens de fusão de dados (input data, early and late fusion), fornecendo um
resultado final derivado de contribuições complementares de todas as fontes de dados.
Os resultados experimentais mostram que o desempenho do algoritmo desenvolvido
melhorou com a inclusão de informação multi-sensor, alcançando um valor para F1-
score de 81.8% na distinção entre sete divisões domésticas. Concluindo, o algoritmo de
localização indoor, combinando informações de três fontes diferentes através de métodos
de fusão de dados, alcançou uma localização room-level e está apto para ser aplicado num
cenário de Assistência à Autonomia no DomicÃlio
A Review of pedestrian indoor positioning systems for mass market applications
In the last decade, the interest in Indoor Location Based Services (ILBS) has increased stimulating the development of Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS). In particular, ILBS look for positioning systems that can be applied anywhere in the world for millions of users, that is, there is a need for developing IPS for mass market applications. Those systems must provide accurate position estimations with minimum infrastructure cost and easy scalability to different environments. This survey overviews the current state of the art of IPSs and classifies them in terms of the infrastructure and methodology employed. Finally, each group is reviewed analysing its advantages and disadvantages and its applicability to mass market applications
A Survey of Positioning Systems Using Visible LED Lights
© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.As Global Positioning System (GPS) cannot provide satisfying performance in indoor environments, indoor positioning technology, which utilizes indoor wireless signals instead of GPS signals, has grown rapidly in recent years. Meanwhile, visible light communication (VLC) using light devices such as light emitting diodes (LEDs) has been deemed to be a promising candidate in the heterogeneous wireless networks that may collaborate with radio frequencies (RF) wireless networks. In particular, light-fidelity has a great potential for deployment in future indoor environments because of its high throughput and security advantages. This paper provides a comprehensive study of a novel positioning technology based on visible white LED lights, which has attracted much attention from both academia and industry. The essential characteristics and principles of this system are deeply discussed, and relevant positioning algorithms and designs are classified and elaborated. This paper undertakes a thorough investigation into current LED-based indoor positioning systems and compares their performance through many aspects, such as test environment, accuracy, and cost. It presents indoor hybrid positioning systems among VLC and other systems (e.g., inertial sensors and RF systems). We also review and classify outdoor VLC positioning applications for the first time. Finally, this paper surveys major advances as well as open issues, challenges, and future research directions in VLC positioning systems.Peer reviewe
Multi sensor system for pedestrian tracking and activity recognition in indoor environments
The widespread use of mobile devices and the rise of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) have allowed mobile tracking applications to become very popular and valuable in outdoor environments. However, tracking pedestrians in indoor environments with Global Positioning System (GPS)-based schemes is still very challenging. Along with indoor tracking, the ability to recognize pedestrian behavior and activities can lead to considerable growth in location-based applications including pervasive healthcare, leisure and guide services (such as, hospitals, museums, airports, etc.), and emergency services, among the most important ones. This paper presents a system for pedestrian tracking and activity recognition in indoor environments using exclusively common off-the-shelf sensors embedded in smartphones (accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer and barometer). The proposed system combines the knowledge found in biomechanical patterns of the human body while accomplishing basic activities, such as walking or climbing stairs up and down, along with identifiable signatures that certain indoor locations (such as turns or elevators) introduce on sensing data. The system was implemented and tested on Android-based mobile phones. The system detects and counts steps with an accuracy of 97% and 96:67% in flat floor and stairs, respectively; detects user changes of direction and altitude with 98:88% and 96:66% accuracy, respectively; and recognizes the proposed human activities with a 95% accuracy. All modules combined lead to a total tracking accuracy of 91:06% in common human motion indoor displacement
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