Crowd sourced self beacon mapping with isolated signal aware bluetooth low energy positioning

In the past few decades, there has been an increase in the demand for positioning and navigation systems in various fields. Location-based service (LBS) usage covers a range of different variations from advertising and navigation to social media. Positioning based on a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) is the commonly used technology for positioning nowadays. However, the GNSS has a limitation of needing the satellites to be in line-of-sight (LOS) to provide an accurate position. Given this limitation, several different approaches are employed for indoor positioning needs. Bluetooth low energy (BLE) is one of the wireless technologies used for indoor positioning. However, BLE is well-known for having unstable signals, which will affect an estimated distance. Moreover, unlike Wi-Fi, BLE is not commonly and widely used, and BLE beacons must thus be placed to enable a venue with BLE positioning. The need to deploy the beacons results in a lengthy process to place and record the position of each placed beacon. This thesis proposes several solutions to solve these problems. A filter based on a Fourier transform is proposed to stabilise a BLE signal to obtain a more reliable reading. This allows the BLE signals to be less affected by internal variation than unfiltered signal. An obstruction-aware algorithm is also proposed using a statistical approach, which allows for the detection of non-line-of-sight (NLOS). These proposed solutions allow for a more stable BLE signal, which will result in a more reliable estimation of distance using the signal. The proposed solutions will enable accurate distance estimation, which will translate into improved positioning accuracy. An improvement in 88% of the test points is demonstrated by implementing the proposed solutions. Furthermore, to reduce the calibration needed when deploying the BLE beacons, a beacon-mapping algorithm is proposed that can be used to determine the position of BLE beacons. The proposed algorithm is based on trilateration with added information about direction. It uses the received signal strength (RSS) and the estimated distance to determine the error range, and a direction line is drawn based on the estimated error range. Finally, to further reduce the calibration needed, a crowdsource approach is proposed. This approach is proposed alongside a complete system to map the location of unknown beacons. The proposed system uses three phases to determine the user location, determine the beacons’ position, and recalculate BLE scans that have insufficient number of known BLE beacons. Each beacon and user’s position determined is assigned a weight to represent the reliability of that position. This is important to ensure that the position generated from a more reliable source will be emphasised. The proposed system demonstrates that the beacon-mapping system can map beacons with a root mean squared error (RMSE) of 4.64 m and a mean of absolute error (MAE) of 4.28 m

Aportaciones al proceso de creación de contenidos de realidad aumentada, orientados a formación, industria y construcción

La Realidad Aumentada (AR) consiste en aumentar la percepción que el usuario tiene del mundo real con información virtual que lo complementa. Esta característica de aumentar los sentidos, es deseable en muchos campos de aplicación, por lo que aunque es un campo de investigación relativamente joven, ha experimentado un gran auge en los últimos años. La evolución de cada uno de los procesos que componen un sistema AR, ha permitido que está tecnología traspase las puertas de los laboratorios, y pueda ser utilizada por cualquier usuario que disponga, por ejemplo, de un Smartphone. Sin embargo, todavía existe una gran limitación y es la creación de contenidos (authoring). En la actualidad existen un pequeño número de herramientas de authoring que permiten crear contenidos AR, y en la mayoría de casos son herramientas propietarias que se limitan al uso de su propia tecnología. En este trabajo se presentan las aportaciones al proceso de authoring de contenidos AR orientados a formación, industria y construcción. Estas aportaciones se engloban en dos campos principales: la creación de contenidos para ayudas visuales, y la creación de información durante la revisión del proceso constructivo por medio de AR (denominada información As-Built). Para la creación de ayudas visuales AR se define un nuevo modelo de authoring, a partir del modelo de presentaciones de diapositivas digitales, en el que se incluyen los mecanismos necesarios para crear los contenidos aumentados. Para la creación de la información As-Built, se han desarrollado, tanto una metodología, como el sistema que permite llevarla a cabo. Todas las aportaciones presentadas en este trabajo tienen la finalidad de permitir a usuarios no expertos crear contenidos AR, abstrayéndoles del funcionamiento a bajo nivel de los sistemas AR. En los resultados presentados a lo largo de este trabajo se muestra cómo los sistemas desarrollados logran dicho objetivo, permitiendo a los usuarios no expertos, crear contenidos AR tanto en ayudas visuales, como para documentar el proceso constructivo.Augmented Reality (AR) consists in augmenting the user’s perception of the real world adding virtual information that complements it. This capability of augment the senses, it is desirable in many applications, so although it is a relatively young field of research, has experienced a boom in recent years. The evolution of each of the processes involved in AR systems (computer vision, 3d rendering, etc.), it is making possible that this technology goes out from laboratories, to be used by anyone who own, for example, a Smartphone. However, there is still a major constraint, the AR content creation (denominated authoring). Nowadays, there are a small number of authoring tools for creating AR content, and in most cases are proprietary systems that are limited to using its own technology. In this thesis, the contributions to the process of authoring of AR content oriented to training, construction and industry are presented. These contributions are focused on two main areas: creating AR content for visual aids, and the creation of information during the review of the construction process through AR (As-Built information). To create AR visual aids, a new authoring model is defined extending the digital slide presentations, which include the necessary mechanisms to create the augmented content. To create the As-Built information, during the revision of the construction process, a methodology and the system that allows carrying it out are proposed. All contributions presented in this paper are intended to allow non-expert users to create AR content, by abstracting them from the low level technical details of AR applications. The results presented will show how the proposed systems achieved this objective; allowing non-expert users to create AR content both AR visual aids and As-Built information to document the construction process