Using the local positioning system based on Pulse Width Modulation for Robot Positioning

There are many ways to estimate the location of a moving object. One way is to determine its location using a GPS which calculates longitude and latitude of the object by the data received by the satellites rotating around the earth. However, there are no devices to recover calculated inherent errors and have an appropriate estimated signal. From robots' place, we should correct the errors made by collected data from sensors. A problem happening alternatively in the landmark identifying a method is the similar sharing data. The data obtained should be related to correcting land mark. Even though, some landmarks are likely to be similar. In addition, it is impossible to guarantee sightseeing line among landmarks in some arrangements. The other methods are to utilize radio frequency stations, which are placed around the robot by which we can find the real place of source of measurement error. In non-isolated environments, due to noises in signals using such a system should be investigated. In this PAPER, LPS (local positioning system) and the way it influences interference signals on the simulated system has been studied. A method has been tried to present in order to decrease destructive effects of noise using GA (genetic algorithm). In this way, the LPS modulation method and factors which cause interference signal and noises in the system have been stated. The obtained results have been illustrated by different simulations followed by discussions

Context Aware Handover Algorithms For Mobile Positioning Systems

This work proposes context aware handover algorithms for mobile positioning systems. The algorithms perform handover among positioning systems based on important contextual factors related to position determination with efficient use of battery. The proposed solution is implemented in the form of an Android application named Locate@nav6. The performance of the proposed solution was tested in selected experimental areas. The handover performance was compared with other existing location applications. The proposed solution performed correct handover among positioning systems in 95 percent of cases studied while two other applications performed correct handover in only 50 percent of cases studied. Battery usage of the proposed solution is less than one third of the battery usage of two other applications. The analysis of the positioning error of the applications demonstrated that, the proposed solution is able to reduce positioning error indirectly by handing over the task of positioning to an appropriate positioning system. This kept the average error of positioning below 42.1 meters for Locate@nav6 while the average error for two other applications namely Google Latitude and Malaysia maps was between 92.7 and 171.13 meters

Context Aware Handover Algorithms for Mobile Positioning Systems

Abstract: This work proposes context aware handover algorithms for mobile positioning systems. The algorithms perform handover among positioning systems based on important contextual factors related to position determination with efficient use of battery. The proposed solution which consists of the algorithms is implemented in the form of an Android application named Locate@nav6. The performance of the proposed solution was tested in selected experimental areas. The handover performance was compared with other existing location applications. The proposed solution performed correct handover among positioning systems in 95% of cases studied while two other applications performed correct handover in only 50% of cases studied. Battery usage of the proposed solution is less than one third of the battery usage of two other applications. The analysis of the positioning error of the applications demonstrated that, the proposed solution is able to reduce positioning error indirectly by handing over the task of positioning to an appropriate positioning system. This kept the average error of positioning below 42.1 meters for Locate@nav6 while the average error for two other applications namely Google Latitude and Malaysia maps was between 92.7 and 171.13 meters

Using the local positioning system based on Pulse Width Modulation for Robot Positioning

There are many ways to estimate the location of a moving object. One way is to determine its location using a GPS which calculates longitude and latitude of the object by the data received by the satellites rotating around the earth. However, there are no devices to recover calculated inherent errors and have an appropriate estimated signal. From robots' place, we should correct the errors made by collected data from sensors. A problem happening alternatively in the landmark identifying a method is the similar sharing data. The data obtained should be related to correcting land mark. Even though, some landmarks are likely to be similar. In addition, it is impossible to guarantee sightseeing line among landmarks in some arrangements. The other methods are to utilize radio frequency stations, which are placed around the robot by which we can find the real place of source of measurement error. In non-isolated environments, due to noises in signals using such a system should be investigated. In this PAPER, LPS (local positioning system) and the way it influences interference signals on the simulated system has been studied. A method has been tried to present in order to decrease destructive effects of noise using GA (genetic algorithm). In this way, the LPS modulation method and factors which cause interference signal and noises in the system have been stated. The obtained results have been illustrated by different simulations followed by discussions

Context Aware Handover Algorithms for Mobile Positioning Systems

Abstract: This work proposes context aware handover algorithms for mobile positioning systems. The algorithms perform handover among positioning systems based on important contextual factors related to position determination with efficient use of battery. The proposed solution which consists of the algorithms is implemented in the form of an Android application named Locate@nav6. The performance of the proposed solution was tested in selected experimental areas. The handover performance was compared with other existing location applications. The proposed solution performed correct handover among positioning systems in 95% of cases studied while two other applications performed correct handover in only 50% of cases studied. Battery usage of the proposed solution is less than one third of the battery usage of two other applications. The analysis of the positioning error of the applications demonstrated that, the proposed solution is able to reduce positioning error indirectly by handing over the task of positioning to an appropriate positioning system. This kept the average error of positioning below 42.1 meters for Locate@nav6 while the average error for two other applications namely Google Latitude and Malaysia maps was between 92.7 and 171.13 meters

Human Crowdsourcing Data for Indoor Location Applied to Ambient Assisted Living Scenarios

In the last decades, the rise of life expectancy has accelerated the demand for new technological solutions to provide a longer life with improved quality. One of the major areas of the Ambient Assisted Living aims to monitor the elderly location indoors. For this purpose, indoor positioning systems are valuable tools and can be classified depending on the need of a supporting infrastructure. Infrastructure-based systems require the investment on expensive equipment and existing infrastructure-free systems, although rely on the pervasively available characteristics of the buildings, present some limitations regarding the extensive process of acquiring and maintaining fingerprints, the maps that store the environmental characteristics to be used in the localisation phase. These problems hinder indoor positioning systems to be deployed in most scenarios. To overcome these limitations, an algorithm for the automatic construction of indoor floor plans and environmental fingerprints is proposed. With the use of crowdsourcing techniques, where the extensiveness of a task is reduced with the help of a large undefined group of users, the algorithm relies on the combination ofmultiple sources of information, collected in a non-annotated way by common smartphones. The crowdsourced data is composed by inertial sensors, responsible for estimating the users’ trajectories, Wi-Fi radio and magnetic field signals. Wi-Fi radio data is used to cluster the trajectories into smaller groups, each corresponding to specific areas of the building. Distance metrics applied to magnetic field signals are used to identify geomagnetic similarities between different users’ trajectories. The building’s floor plan is then automatically created, which results in fingerprints labelled with physical locations. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieved comparable floor plan and fingerprints to those acquired manually, allowing the conclusion that is possible to automate the setup process of infrastructure-free systems. With these results, this solution can be applied in any fingerprinting-based indoor positioning system

Integration of Local Positioning System & Strapdown Inertial Navigation System for Hand-Held Tool Tracking

This research concerns the development of a smart sensory system for tracking a hand-held moving device to millimeter accuracy, for slow or nearly static applications over extended periods of time. Since different operators in different applications may use the system, the proposed design should provide the accurate position, orientation, and velocity of the object without relying on the knowledge of its operation and environment, and based purely on the motion that the object experiences. This thesis proposes the design of the integration a low-cost Local Positioning System (LPS) and a low-cost StrapDown Inertial Navigation System (SDINS) with the association of the modified EKF to determine 3D position and 3D orientation of a hand-held tool within a required accuracy. A hybrid LPS/SDINS combines and complements the best features of two different navigation systems, providing a unique solution to track and localize a moving object more precisely. SDINS provides continuous estimates of all components of a motion, but SDINS loses its accuracy over time because of inertial sensors drift and inherent noise. LPS has the advantage that it can possibly get absolute position and velocity independent of operation time; however, it is not highly robust, is computationally quite expensive, and exhibits low measurement rate. This research consists of three major parts: developing a multi-camera vision system as a reliable and cost-effective LPS, developing a SDINS for a hand-held tool, and developing a Kalman filter for sensor fusion. Developing the multi-camera vision system includes mounting the cameras around the workspace, calibrating the cameras, capturing images, applying image processing algorithms and features extraction for every single frame from each camera, and estimating the 3D position from 2D images. In this research, the specific configuration for setting up the multi-camera vision system is proposed to reduce the loss of line of sight as much as possible. The number of cameras, the position of the cameras with respect to each other, and the position and the orientation of the cameras with respect to the center of the world coordinate system are the crucial characteristics in this configuration. The proposed multi-camera vision system is implemented by employing four CCD cameras which are fixed in the navigation frame and their lenses placed on semicircle. All cameras are connected to a PC through the frame grabber, which includes four parallel video channels and is able to capture images from four cameras simultaneously. As a result of this arrangement, a wide circular field of view is initiated with less loss of line-of-sight. However, the calibration is more difficult than a monocular or stereo vision system. The calibration of the multi-camera vision system includes the precise camera modeling, single camera calibration for each camera, stereo camera calibration for each two neighboring cameras, defining a unique world coordinate system, and finding the transformation from each camera frame to the world coordinate system. Aside from the calibration procedure, digital image processing is required to be applied into the images captured by all four cameras in order to localize the tool tip. In this research, the digital image processing includes image enhancement, edge detection, boundary detection, and morphologic operations. After detecting the tool tip in each image captured by each camera, triangulation procedure and optimization algorithm are applied in order to find its 3D position with respect to the known navigation frame. In the SDINS, inertial sensors are mounted rigidly and directly to the body of the tracking object and the inertial measurements are transformed computationally to the known navigation frame. Usually, three gyros and three accelerometers, or a three-axis gyro and a three-axis accelerometer are used for implementing SDINS. The inertial sensors are typically integrated in an inertial measurement unit (IMU). IMUs commonly suffer from bias drift, scale-factor error owing to non-linearity and temperature changes, and misalignment as a result of minor manufacturing defects. Since all these errors lead to SDINS drift in position and orientation, a precise calibration procedure is required to compensate for these errors. The precision of the SDINS depends not only on the accuracy of calibration parameters but also on the common motion-dependent errors. The common motion-dependent errors refer to the errors caused by vibration, coning motion, sculling, and rotational motion. Since inertial sensors provide the full range of heading changes, turn rates, and applied forces that the object is experiencing along its movement, accurate 3D kinematics equations are developed to compensate for the common motion-dependent errors. Therefore, finding the complete knowledge of the motion and orientation of the tool tip requires significant computational complexity and challenges relating to resolution of specific forces, attitude computation, gravity compensation, and corrections for common motion-dependent errors. The Kalman filter technique is a powerful method for improving the output estimation and reducing the effect of the sensor drift. In this research, the modified EKF is proposed to reduce the error of position estimation. The proposed multi-camera vision system data with cooperation of the modified EKF assists the SDINS to deal with the drift problem. This configuration guarantees the real-time position and orientation tracking of the instrument. As a result of the proposed Kalman filter, the effect of the gravitational force in the state-space model will be removed and the error which results from inaccurate gravitational force is eliminated. In addition, the resulting position is smooth and ripple-free. The experimental results of the hybrid vision/SDINS design show that the position error of the tool tip in all directions is about one millimeter RMS. If the sampling rate of the vision system decreases from 20 fps to 5 fps, the errors are still acceptable for many applications