Indoor And Outdoor Real Time Information Collection in Disaster Scenario

A disaster usually severely harms human health and property. After a disaster, great amount of information of a disaster area is needed urgently. The information not only indicates the severity of the disaster, but also is crucial for an efficient search and rescue process. In order to quickly and accurately collect real time information in a disaster scenario, a mobile platform is developed for an outdoor scenario and a localization and navigation system for responders is introduced for an indoor scenario. The mobile platform has been integrated to the DIORAMA system. It is built with a 6-wheel robot chassis along with an Arduino microcontroller. Controlled by a mounted Android smartphone, the mobile platform can receive commands from incident commanders and quickly respond to the commands. While patrolling in a disaster area, a constant RFID signal is collected to improve the localization accuracy of victims. Pictures and videos are also captured in order to enhance the situational awareness of rescuers. The design of the indoor information collection is focused on the responder side. During a disaster scenario, it is hard to track responders’ locations in an indoor environment. In this thesis, an indoor localization and navigation system based on Bluetooth low energy and Android is developed for helping responders report current location and quickly find the right path in the environment. Different localization algorithms are investigated and implemented. A navigation system based on A­* is also proposed

RFID Localisation For Internet Of Things Smart Homes: A Survey

The Internet of Things (IoT) enables numerous business opportunities in fields as diverse as e-health, smart cities, smart homes, among many others. The IoT incorporates multiple long-range, short-range, and personal area wireless networks and technologies into the designs of IoT applications. Localisation in indoor positioning systems plays an important role in the IoT. Location Based IoT applications range from tracking objects and people in real-time, assets management, agriculture, assisted monitoring technologies for healthcare, and smart homes, to name a few. Radio Frequency based systems for indoor positioning such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a key enabler technology for the IoT due to its costeffective, high readability rates, automatic identification and, importantly, its energy efficiency characteristic. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art RFID technologies in IoT Smart Homes applications. It presents several comparable studies of RFID based projects in smart homes and discusses the applications, techniques, algorithms, and challenges of adopting RFID technologies in IoT smart home systems.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures, 3 table

Enabling Cyber Physical Systems with Wireless Sensor Networking Technologies

[[abstract]]Over the last few years, we have witnessed a growing interest in Cyber Physical Systems (CPSs) that rely on a strong synergy between computational and physical components. CPSs are expected to have a tremendous impact on many critical sectors (such as energy, manufacturing, healthcare, transportation, aerospace, etc) of the economy. CPSs have the ability to transform the way human-to-human, human-toobject, and object-to-object interactions take place in the physical and virtual worlds. The increasing pervasiveness of Wireless Sensor Networking (WSN) technologies in many applications make them an important component of emerging CPS designs. We present some of the most important design requirements of CPS architectures. We discuss key sensor network characteristics that can be leveraged in CPS designs. In addition, we also review a few well-known CPS application domains that depend on WSNs in their design architectures and implementations. Finally, we present some of the challenges that still need to be addressed to enable seamless integration of WSN with CPS designs.[[incitationindex]]SCI[[booktype]]紙

A robot swarm assisting a human fire-fighter

Emergencies in industrial warehouses are a major concern for fire-fighters. The large dimensions, together with the development of dense smoke that drastically reduces visibility, represent major challenges. The GUARDIANS robot swarm is designed to assist fire-fighters in searching a large warehouse. In this paper we discuss the technology developed for a swarm of robots assisting fire-fighters. We explain the swarming algorithms that provide the functionality by which the robots react to and follow humans while no communication is required. Next we discuss the wireless communication system, which is a so-called mobile ad-hoc network. The communication network provides also the means to locate the robots and humans. Thus, the robot swarm is able to provide guidance information to the humans. Together with the fire-fighters we explored how the robot swarm should feed information back to the human fire-fighter. We have designed and experimented with interfaces for presenting swarm-based information to human beings

INDOOR LOCALIZATION AND TRACKING: METHODS, TECHNOLOGIES AND RESEARCH CHALLENGES

The paper presents a comprehensive survey of contemporary methods, technologies and systems for localization and tracking of moving objects in indoor environment and gives their comparison according to various criteria, such as accuracy, privacy, scalability and type of location data. Some representative examples of indoor LBS applications available on the market are presented that are based on reviewed localization technologies. The prominent research directions in this domain are categorized and discussed

Evaluation and Comparison of Ultrasonic and UWB Technology for Indoor Localization in an Industrial Environment

Evaluations of different technologies and solutions for indoor localization exist but only a few are aimed at the industrial context. In this paper, we compare and analyze two prominent solutions based on Ultra Wide Band Radio (Pozyx) and Ultrasound (GoT), both installed in an industrial manufacturing laboratory. The comparison comprises a static and a dynamic case. The static case evaluates average localization errors over 90 s intervals for 100 ground-truth points at three different heights, corresponding to different relevant objects in an industrial environment: mobile robots, pallets, forklifts and worker helmets. The average error obtained across the laboratory is similar for both systems and is between 0.3 m and 0.6 m, with higher errors for low altitudes. The dynamic case is performed with a mobile robot travelling with an average speed of 0.5 m/s at a height of 0.3 m. In this case, low frequency error components are filtered out to focus the comparison on dynamic errors. Average dynamic errors are within 0.3–0.4 m for Pozyx and within 0.1–0.2 m for GoT. Results show an acceptable accuracy required for tracking people or objects and could serve as a guideline for the least achievable accuracy when applied for mobile robotics in conjunction with other elements of a robotic navigation stack

User Experience Enhancement on Smartphones using Wireless Communication Technologies

학위논문 (박사) -- 서울대학교 대학원 : 공과대학 전기·정보공학부, 2020. 8. 박세웅.Recently, various sensors as well as wireless communication technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) have been equipped with smartphones. In addition, in many cases, users use a smartphone while on the move, so if a wireless communication technologies and various sensors are used for a mobile user, a better user experience can be provided. For example, when a user moves while using Wi-Fi, the user experience can be improved by providing a seamless Wi-Fi service. In addition, it is possible to provide a special service such as indoor positioning or navigation by estimating the users mobility in an indoor environment, and additional services such as location-based advertising and payment systems can also be provided. Therefore, improving the user experience by using wireless communication technology and smartphones sensors is considered to be an important research field in the future. In this dissertation, we propose three systems that can improve the user experience or convenience by usingWi-Fi, BLE, and smartphones sensors: (i) BLEND: BLE beacon-aided fast Wi-Fi handoff for smartphones, (ii) PYLON: Smartphone based Indoor Path Estimation and Localization without Human Intervention, (iii) FINISH: Fully-automated Indoor Navigation using Smartphones with Zero Human Assistance. First, we propose fast handoff scheme called BLEND exploiting BLE as secondary radio. We conduct detailed analysis of the sticky client problem on commercial smartphones with experiment and close examination of Android source code. We propose BLEND, which exploits BLE modules to provide smartphones with prior knowledge of the presence and information of APs operating at 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi channels. BLEND operating with only application requires no hardware and Android source code modification of smartphones.We prototype BLEND with commercial smartphones and evaluate the performance in real environment. Our measurement results demonstrate that BLEND significantly improves throughput and video bitrate by up to 61% and 111%, compared to a commercial Android application, respectively, with negligible energy overhead. Second, we design a path estimation and localization system, termed PYLON, which is plug-and-play on Android smartphones. PYLON includes a novel landmark correction scheme that leverages real doors of indoor environments consisting of floor plan mapping, door passing time detection and correction. It operates without any user intervention. PYLON relaxes some requirements for localization systems. It does not require any modifications to hardware or software of smartphones, and the initial location of WiFi APs, BLE beacons, and users. We implement PYLON on five Android smartphones and evaluate it on two office buildings with the help of three participants to prove applicability and scalability. PYLON achieves very high floor plan mapping accuracy with a low localization error. Finally, We design a fully-automated navigation system, termed FINISH, which addresses the problems of existing previous indoor navigation systems. FINISH generates the radio map of an indoor building based on the localization system to determine the initial location of the user. FINISH relaxes some requirements for current indoor navigation systems. It does not require any human assistance to provide navigation instructions. In addition, it is plug-and-play on Android smartphones. We implement FINISH on five Android smartphones and evaluate it on five floors of an office building with the help of multiple users to prove applicability and scalability. FINISH determines the location of the user with extremely high accuracy with in one step. In summary, we propose systems that enhance the users convenience and experience by utilizing wireless infrastructures such as Wi-Fi and BLE and various smartphones sensors such as accelerometer, gyroscope, and barometer equipped in smartphones. Systems are implemented on commercial smartphones to verify the performance through experiments. As a result, systems show the excellent performance that can enhance the users experience.1 Introduction 1 1.1 Motivation 1 1.2 Overview of Existing Approaches 3 1.2.1 Wi-Fi handoff for smartphones 3 1.2.2 Indoor path estimation and localization 4 1.2.3 Indoor navigation 5 1.3 Main Contributions 7 1.3.1 BLEND: BLE Beacon-aided Fast Handoff for Smartphones 7 1.3.2 PYLON: Smartphone Based Indoor Path Estimation and Localization with Human Intervention 8 1.3.3 FINISH: Fully-automated Indoor Navigation using Smartphones with Zero Human Assistance 9 1.4 Organization of Dissertation 10 2 BLEND: BLE Beacon-Aided FastWi-Fi Handoff for Smartphones 11 2.1 Introduction 11 2.2 Related Work 14 2.2.1 Wi-Fi-based Handoff 14 2.2.2 WPAN-aided AP Discovery 15 2.3 Background 16 2.3.1 Handoff Procedure in IEEE 802.11 16 2.3.2 BSS Load Element in IEEE 802.11 16 2.3.3 Bluetooth Low Energy 17 2.4 Sticky Client Problem 17 2.4.1 Sticky Client Problem of Commercial Smartphone 17 2.4.2 Cause of Sticky Client Problem 20 2.5 BLEND: Proposed Scheme 21 2.5.1 Advantages and Necessities of BLE as Secondary Low-Power Radio 21 2.5.2 Overall Architecture 22 2.5.3 AP Operation 23 2.5.4 Smartphone Operation 24 2.5.5 Verification of aTH estimation 28 2.6 Performance Evaluation 30 2.6.1 Implementation and Measurement Setup 30 2.6.2 Saturated Traffic Scenario 31 2.6.3 Video Streaming Scenario 35 2.7 Summary 38 3 PYLON: Smartphone based Indoor Path Estimation and Localization without Human Intervention 41 3.1 Introduction 41 3.2 Background and Related Work 44 3.2.1 Infrastructure-Based Localization 44 3.2.2 Fingerprint-Based Localization 45 3.2.3 Model-Based Localization 45 3.2.4 Dead Reckoning 46 3.2.5 Landmark-Based Localization 47 3.2.6 Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) 47 3.3 System Overview 48 3.3.1 Notable RSSI Signature 49 3.3.2 Smartphone Operation 50 3.3.3 Server Operation 51 3.4 Path Estimation 52 3.4.1 Step Detection 52 3.4.2 Step Length Estimation 54 3.4.3 Walking Direction 54 3.4.4 Location Update 55 3.5 Landmark Correction Part 1: Virtual Room Generation 56 3.5.1 RSSI Stacking Difference 56 3.5.2 Virtual Room Generation 57 3.5.3 Virtual Graph Generation 59 3.5.4 Physical Graph Generation 60 3.6 Landmark Correction Part 2: From Floor Plan Mapping to Path Correction 60 3.6.1 Candidate Graph Generation 60 3.6.2 Backbone Node Mapping 62 3.6.3 Dead-end Node Mapping 65 3.6.4 Final Candidate Graph Selection 66 3.6.5 Door Passing Time Detection 68 3.6.6 Path Correction 70 3.7 Particle Filter 71 3.8 Performance Evaluation 73 3.8.1 Implementation and Measurement Setup 73 3.8.2 Step Detection Accuracy 77 3.8.3 Floor Plan Mapping Accuracy 77 3.8.4 Door Passing Time 78 3.8.5 Walking Direction and Localization Performance 81 3.8.6 Impact of WiFi AP and BLE Beacon Number 84 3.8.7 Impact of Walking Distance and Speed 84 3.8.8 Performance on Different Areas 87 3.9 Summary 87 4 FINISH: Fully-automated Indoor Navigation using Smartphones with Zero Human Assistance 91 4.1 Introduction 91 4.2 Related Work 92 4.2.1 Localization-based Navigation System 92 4.2.2 Peer-to-peer Navigation System 93 4.3 System Overview 93 4.3.1 System Architecture 93 4.3.2 An Example for Navigation 95 4.4 Level Change Detection and Floor Decision 96 4.4.1 Level Change Detection 96 4.5 Real-time navigation 97 4.5.1 Initial Floor and Location Decision 97 4.5.2 Orientation Adjustment 98 4.5.3 Shortest Path Estimation 99 4.6 Performance Evaluation 99 4.6.1 Initial Location Accuracy 99 4.6.2 Real-Time Navigation Accuracy 100 4.7 Summary 101 5 Conclusion 102 5.1 Research Contributions 102 5.2 Future Work 103 Abstract (In Korean) 118 감사의 글Docto

Implementación de tecnologías RFID e IoT inalámbricas en el Modelado de información de construcción (BIM)

ABSTRACT: The integration and installation of innovative Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies in combination with wireless Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in Building Information Modelling (BIM), assigned building elements, can create connectivity between the physical- and the virtual world. Beyond the identification of physical objects, further information can be connected, which can be made available to different user groups during the entire life cycle of the building structure. This provides a high level of transparency, in that by scanning the tagged building elements, complete associated information can be accessed and presented to users via applications, in visual and audio form. One use of an RFID and BIM-supported electronic guidance system, namely for the visually impaired, has already been investigated in my bachelor thesis at the University of Applied Sciences (Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen, THM). This Master’s Thesis focuses on the implementation of passive RFID technology into BIM models in combining them with open-source software applications. BIM represents the digital twin of building models in the digital world and can be linked to physical structures (buildings, roads, sewer systems and such others) and building materials (e.g. textiles, mineral and plastic floor coverings, concrete components) by integrating RFID tags. Connecting the parametric BIM models with the physical building elements by using RFID and wireless IoT technologies in a multi-platform application enables the BIM building models to be actively used throughout the life cycle of a building, not only by the facility management, but also by the public for various use cases. During the literature review, suitable software and hardware components were selected, and a prototype multi-platform application for a navigation and positioning system was developed as proof of concept for the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) file. (See Demo Version at https://opennavibim.herokuapp.com/ ). The challenge was to read the RFID tags in different installation scenarios. Depending on the installation situations (under, over or in the material), various requirements were specified for RFID tags and readers (RFID, handhold personal digital assistant “PDA”). In this field, further hardware developments are necessary.RESUMEN: Mediante la integración e instalación de la innovadora tecnología de identificación por radiofrecuencia (RFID, Radio Frequency Identification) en el modelado digital de información de construcción (BIM, Building Information Modelling), con la interconexión inalámbrica del internet de las cosas (IoT, Internet of Things), es posible crear una conectividad entre el mundo físico y el virtual. Más allá de la mera identificación de objetos existentes, esta conectividad permite incorporar información adicional, que puede ponerse en disposición de los diferentes grupos de usuarios que intervienen durante el ciclo completo de vida de la estructura de la edificación. Se consigue un alto de nivel de transparencia en ese traspaso de información, accesible por medio del escaneado de los elementos etiquetados en la edificación, al tener una completa información asociada que es presentada a los usuarios vía aplicaciones en formato visual o de audio. Una investigación en la aplicación de tecnología RFID basada en BIM para un sistema de navegación electrónica, destinada a personas con discapacidad visual, ha sido desarrollada en mi trabajo fin de grado en la Universidad de Ciencias Aplicadas de Mittelhessen (THM). El presente Trabajo Fin de Master se centra en la implementación de tecnología RFID pasiva en modelos BIM combinados con aplicaciones de software libre. El modelo BIM representa el gemelo digital de los elementos de construcción en el mundo virtual, permitiendo establecer una relación del modelo con estructuras físicas (edificios, carreteras o sistemas de alcantarillado, entre otros) y materiales de construcción (por ejemplo, textiles, cubiertas de suelo minerales o plásticas, componentes de hormigón, …) por medio de la integración de etiquetas RFID. La conexión de los modelos paramétricos BIM con los elementos físicos del edificio, mediante el uso de tecnologías RFID e IoT inalámbricas en una aplicación multiplataforma, permite que los modelos de construcción BIM se utilicen activamente a lo largo del ciclo de vida de un edificio, no solo por la gestión de las instalaciones, sino también por el público para diversos casos de uso. Durante la revisión bibliográfica, se seleccionaron los componentes de software y hardware adecuados, y se desarrolló un prototipo de aplicación multiplataforma para un sistema de navegación y posicionamiento como prueba de viabilidad del concepto del modelo Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). (Véase la versión de demostración en https://opennavibim.herokuapp.com/ ). La lectura de las etiquetas RFID en diferentes en diferentes situaciones de instalación presenta un desafío, dependiendo de la instalación (debajo, encima o en el material) los requisitos impuestos a las etiquetas y lectores RFID son diferentes. Por lo tanto, es necesario seguir desarrollando el hardware en este ámbito.Máster en Ingeniería de Caminos, Canales y Puertos (Plan 2020

GUARDIANS final report

Emergencies in industrial warehouses are a major concern for firefghters. The large dimensions together with the development of dense smoke that drastically reduces visibility, represent major challenges. The Guardians robot swarm is designed to assist fire fighters in searching a large warehouse. In this report we discuss the technology developed for a swarm of robots searching and assisting fire fighters. We explain the swarming algorithms which provide the functionality by which the robots react to and follow humans while no communication is required. Next we discuss the wireless communication system, which is a so-called mobile ad-hoc network. The communication network provides also one of the means to locate the robots and humans. Thus the robot swarm is able to locate itself and provide guidance information to the humans. Together with the re ghters we explored how the robot swarm should feed information back to the human fire fighter. We have designed and experimented with interfaces for presenting swarm based information to human beings

GUARDIANS final report part 1 (draft): a robot swarm assisting a human fire fighter

Emergencies in industrial warehouses are a major concern for fire fighters. The large dimensions together with the development of dense smoke that drastically reduces visibility, represent major challenges. The Guardians robot swarm is designed to assist re ghters in searching a large warehouse. In this paper we discuss the technology developed for a swarm of robots assisting re ghters. We explain the swarming algorithms which provide the functionality by which the robots react to and follow humans while no communication is required. Next we discuss the wireless communication system, which is a so-called mobile ad-hoc network. The communication network provides also the means to locate the robots and humans. Thus the robot swarm is able to provide guidance information to the humans. Together with the fire fighters we explored how the robot swarm should feed information back to the human fire fighter. We have designed and experimented with interfaces for presenting swarm based information to human beings