597 research outputs found
Finding 9-1-1 Callers in Tall Buildings
Accurately determining a user’s floor location is essential for minimizing delays in emergency response. This paper presents a floor localization system intended for emergency calls. We aim to provide floor-level accuracy with minimum infrastructure support. Our approach is to use multiple sensors, all available in today’s smartphones, to trace a user’s vertical movements inside buildings. We make three contributions. First, we present a hybrid architecture for floor localization with emergency calls in mind. The architecture combines beacon-based infrastructure and sensor-based dead reckoning, striking the right balance between accurately determining a user’s location and minimizing the required infrastructure. Second, we present the elevator module for tracking a user’s movement in an elevator. The elevator module addresses three core challenges that make it difficult to accurately derive displacement from acceleration. Third, we present the stairway module which determines the number of floors a user has traveled on foot. Unlike previous systems that track users’ foot steps, our stairway module uses a novel landing counting technique
It's the Human that Matters: Accurate User Orientation Estimation for Mobile Computing Applications
Ubiquity of Internet-connected and sensor-equipped portable devices sparked a
new set of mobile computing applications that leverage the proliferating
sensing capabilities of smart-phones. For many of these applications, accurate
estimation of the user heading, as compared to the phone heading, is of
paramount importance. This is of special importance for many crowd-sensing
applications, where the phone can be carried in arbitrary positions and
orientations relative to the user body. Current state-of-the-art focus mainly
on estimating the phone orientation, require the phone to be placed in a
particular position, require user intervention, and/or do not work accurately
indoors; which limits their ubiquitous usability in different applications. In
this paper we present Humaine, a novel system to reliably and accurately
estimate the user orientation relative to the Earth coordinate system.
Humaine requires no prior-configuration nor user intervention and works
accurately indoors and outdoors for arbitrary cell phone positions and
orientations relative to the user body. The system applies statistical analysis
techniques to the inertial sensors widely available on today's cell phones to
estimate both the phone and user orientation. Implementation of the system on
different Android devices with 170 experiments performed at different indoor
and outdoor testbeds shows that Humaine significantly outperforms the
state-of-the-art in diverse scenarios, achieving a median accuracy of
averaged over a wide variety of phone positions. This is
better than the-state-of-the-art. The accuracy is bounded by the error in the
inertial sensors readings and can be enhanced with more accurate sensors and
sensor fusion.Comment: Accepted for publication in the 11th International Conference on
Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking and Services
(Mobiquitous 2014
Map matching by using inertial sensors: literature review
This literature review aims to clarify what is known about map matching by
using inertial sensors and what are the requirements for map matching, inertial
sensors, placement and possible complementary position technology. The target
is to develop a wearable location system that can position itself within a complex
construction environment automatically with the aid of an accurate building model.
The wearable location system should work on a tablet computer which is running
an augmented reality (AR) solution and is capable of track and visualize 3D-CAD
models in real environment. The wearable location system is needed to support the
system in initialization of the accurate camera pose calculation and automatically
finding the right location in the 3D-CAD model. One type of sensor which does seem
applicable to people tracking is inertial measurement unit (IMU). The IMU sensors
in aerospace applications, based on laser based gyroscopes, are big but provide a
very accurate position estimation with a limited drift. Small and light units such
as those based on Micro-Electro-Mechanical (MEMS) sensors are becoming very
popular, but they have a significant bias and therefore suffer from large drifts and
require method for calibration like map matching. The system requires very little
fixed infrastructure, the monetary cost is proportional to the number of users, rather
than to the coverage area as is the case for traditional absolute indoor location
systems.Siirretty Doriast
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
All Purpose Mobile GPS
The aim of the All Purpose Mobile GPS (The System) is to create a GPS tracking device that can accurately record location and calculate velocity, distance traveled and elevation change even when the satellite signal is lost. This data can later overlay on existing internet-based maps illustrating a trip to oneself or others. The portable tracker consumes very little power achieving several days’ worth of power in a single charge. A solar cell provides a quick battery boost in a pinch. SD Card storage increases compatibility with computers and other forms of data transfer. Data processing, such as viewing the route on a map, occurs on a computer after the completed data logging
Smart Computing and Sensing Technologies for Animal Welfare: A Systematic Review
Animals play a profoundly important and intricate role in our lives today.
Dogs have been human companions for thousands of years, but they now work
closely with us to assist the disabled, and in combat and search and rescue
situations. Farm animals are a critical part of the global food supply chain,
and there is increasing consumer interest in organically fed and humanely
raised livestock, and how it impacts our health and environmental footprint.
Wild animals are threatened with extinction by human induced factors, and
shrinking and compromised habitat. This review sets the goal to systematically
survey the existing literature in smart computing and sensing technologies for
domestic, farm and wild animal welfare. We use the notion of \emph{animal
welfare} in broad terms, to review the technologies for assessing whether
animals are healthy, free of pain and suffering, and also positively stimulated
in their environment. Also the notion of \emph{smart computing and sensing} is
used in broad terms, to refer to computing and sensing systems that are not
isolated but interconnected with communication networks, and capable of remote
data collection, processing, exchange and analysis. We review smart
technologies for domestic animals, indoor and outdoor animal farming, as well
as animals in the wild and zoos. The findings of this review are expected to
motivate future research and contribute to data, information and communication
management as well as policy for animal welfare
Infrastructure-Less Indoor Localization Using the Microphone, Magnetometer and Light Sensor of a Smartphone
In this paper, we present the development of an infrastructure-less indoor location system (ILS), which relies on the use of a microphone, a magnetometer and a light sensor of a smartphone, all three of which are essentially passive sensors, relying on signals available practically in any building in the world, no matter how developed the region is. In our work, we merge the information from those sensors to estimate the user’s location in an indoor environment. A multivariate model is applied to find the user’s location, and we evaluate the quality of the resulting model in terms of sensitivity and specificity. Our experiments were carried out in an office environment during summer and winter, to take into account changes in light patterns, as well as changes in the Earth’s magnetic field irregularities. The experimental results clearly show the benefits of using the information fusion of multiple sensors when contrasted with the use of a single source of informationIn this paper, we present the development of an infrastructure-less indoor location system (ILS), which relies on the use of a microphone, a magnetometer and a light sensor of a smartphone, all three of which are essentially passive sensors, relying on signals available practically in any building in the world, no matter how developed the region is. In our work, we merge the information from those sensors to estimate the user’s location in an indoor environment. A multivariate model is applied to find the user’s location, and we evaluate the quality of the resulting model in terms of sensitivity and specificity. Our experiments were carried out in an office environment during summer and winter, to take into account changes in light patterns, as well as changes in the Earth’s magnetic field irregularities. The experimental results clearly show the benefits of using the information fusion of multiple sensors when contrasted with the use of a single source of informatio
Capture of UAVs through GPS spoofing using low-cost SDR platforms
The increased use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), better known as drones, by civilians has grown exponentially and their autonomous flight control systems have improved significantly, which has resulted in a greater number of accidents and dangerous situations. To help resolve this problem, in this paper, we address the use of low-cost Software Defined Radio (SDR) platforms for simulating a global navigation satellite system (GNSS), more specifically the global positioning system (GPS), in order to transmit false signals and induce a location error on the targeted GPS receiver. Using this approach, a defensive system can be implemented which can divert, or even take control of unauthorized UAVs whose flight path depends on the information obtained by the GPS system.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio
An Adaptive Human Activity-Aided Hand-Held Smartphone-Based Pedestrian Dead Reckoning Positioning System
Pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR), enabled by smartphones’ embedded inertial sensors, is widely applied as a type of indoor positioning system (IPS). However, traditional PDR faces two challenges to improve its accuracy: lack of robustness for different PDR-related human activities and positioning error accumulation over elapsed time. To cope with these issues, we propose a novel adaptive human activity-aided PDR (HAA-PDR) IPS that consists of two main parts, human activity recognition (HAR) and PDR optimization. (1) For HAR, eight different locomotion-related activities are divided into two classes: steady-heading activities (ascending/descending stairs, stationary, normal walking, stationary stepping, and lateral walking) and non-steady-heading activities (door opening and turning). A hierarchical combination of a support vector machine (SVM) and decision tree (DT) is used to recognize steady-heading activities. An autoencoder-based deep neural network (DNN) and a heading range-based method to recognize door opening and turning, respectively. The overall HAR accuracy is over 98.44%. (2) For optimization methods, a process automatically sets the parameters of the PDR differently for different activities to enhance step counting and step length estimation. Furthermore, a method of trajectory optimization mitigates PDR error accumulation utilizing the non-steady-heading activities. We divided the trajectory into small segments and reconstructed it after targeted optimization of each segment. Our method does not use any a priori knowledge of the building layout, plan, or map. Finally, the mean positioning error of our HAA-PDR in a multilevel building is 1.79 m, which is a significant improvement in accuracy compared with a baseline state-of-the-art PDR system
Providing location everywhere
Anacleto R., Figueiredo L., Novais P., Almeida A., Providing Location Everywhere, in Progress in Artificial Intelligence, Antunes L., Sofia Pinto H. (eds), Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 7026, Springer-Verlag, ISBN 978-3-540-24768-2, (Proceedings of the 15th Portuguese conference on Artificial Intelligence - EPIA 2011, Lisboa, Portugal), pp 15-28, 2011.The ability to locate an individual is an essential part of many applications, specially the mobile ones. Obtaining this location
in an open environment is relatively simple through GPS (Global Positioning System), but indoors or even in dense environments this type of
location system doesn’t provide a good accuracy. There are already systems that try to suppress these limitations, but most of them need the
existence of a structured environment to work. Since Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) try to suppress the need of a structured environment we
propose an INS based on Micro Electrical Mechanical Systems (MEMS) that is capable of, in real time, compute the position of an individual everywhere
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