5,806 research outputs found
Smart Geographic object: Toward a new understanding of GIS Technology in Ubiquitous Computing
One of the fundamental aspects of ubiquitous computing is the instrumentation
of the real world by smart devices. This instrumentation constitutes an
opportunity to rethink the interactions between human beings and their
environment on the one hand, and between the components of this environment on
the other. In this paper we discuss what this understanding of ubiquitous
computing can bring to geographic science and particularly to GIS technology.
Our main idea is the instrumentation of the geographic environment through the
instrumentation of geographic objects composing it. And then investigate how
this instrumentation can meet the current limitations of GIS technology, and
offers a new stage of rapprochement between the earth and its abstraction. As
result, the current research work proposes a new concept we named Smart
Geographic Object SGO. The latter is a convergence point between the smart
objects and geographic objects, two concepts appertaining respectively to
Cooperative localization by dual foot-mounted inertial sensors and inter-agent ranging
The implementation challenges of cooperative localization by dual
foot-mounted inertial sensors and inter-agent ranging are discussed and work on
the subject is reviewed. System architecture and sensor fusion are identified
as key challenges. A partially decentralized system architecture based on
step-wise inertial navigation and step-wise dead reckoning is presented. This
architecture is argued to reduce the computational cost and required
communication bandwidth by around two orders of magnitude while only giving
negligible information loss in comparison with a naive centralized
implementation. This makes a joint global state estimation feasible for up to a
platoon-sized group of agents. Furthermore, robust and low-cost sensor fusion
for the considered setup, based on state space transformation and
marginalization, is presented. The transformation and marginalization are used
to give the necessary flexibility for presented sampling based updates for the
inter-agent ranging and ranging free fusion of the two feet of an individual
agent. Finally, characteristics of the suggested implementation are
demonstrated with simulations and a real-time system implementation.Comment: 14 page
A Cooperative Emergency Navigation Framework using Mobile Cloud Computing
The use of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for emergency navigation systems
suffer disadvantages such as limited computing capacity, restricted battery
power and high likelihood of malfunction due to the harsh physical environment.
By making use of the powerful sensing ability of smart phones, this paper
presents a cloud-enabled emergency navigation framework to guide evacuees in a
coordinated manner and improve the reliability and resilience in both
communication and localization. By using social potential fields (SPF),
evacuees form clusters during an evacuation process and are directed to
egresses with the aid of a Cognitive Packet Networks (CPN) based algorithm.
Rather than just rely on the conventional telecommunications infrastructures,
we suggest an Ad hoc Cognitive Packet Network (AHCPN) based protocol to prolong
the life time of smart phones, that adaptively searches optimal communication
routes between portable devices and the egress node that provides access to a
cloud server with respect to the remaining battery power of smart phones and
the time latency.Comment: This document contains 8 pages and 3 figures and has been accepted by
ISCIS 2014 (29th International Symposium on Computer and Information
Sciences
Distributed and adaptive location identification system for mobile devices
Indoor location identification and navigation need to be as simple, seamless,
and ubiquitous as its outdoor GPS-based counterpart is. It would be of great
convenience to the mobile user to be able to continue navigating seamlessly as
he or she moves from a GPS-clear outdoor environment into an indoor environment
or a GPS-obstructed outdoor environment such as a tunnel or forest. Existing
infrastructure-based indoor localization systems lack such capability, on top
of potentially facing several critical technical challenges such as increased
cost of installation, centralization, lack of reliability, poor localization
accuracy, poor adaptation to the dynamics of the surrounding environment,
latency, system-level and computational complexities, repetitive
labor-intensive parameter tuning, and user privacy. To this end, this paper
presents a novel mechanism with the potential to overcome most (if not all) of
the abovementioned challenges. The proposed mechanism is simple, distributed,
adaptive, collaborative, and cost-effective. Based on the proposed algorithm, a
mobile blind device can potentially utilize, as GPS-like reference nodes,
either in-range location-aware compatible mobile devices or preinstalled
low-cost infrastructure-less location-aware beacon nodes. The proposed approach
is model-based and calibration-free that uses the received signal strength to
periodically and collaboratively measure and update the radio frequency
characteristics of the operating environment to estimate the distances to the
reference nodes. Trilateration is then used by the blind device to identify its
own location, similar to that used in the GPS-based system. Simulation and
empirical testing ascertained that the proposed approach can potentially be the
core of future indoor and GPS-obstructed environments
Technologies and solutions for location-based services in smart cities: past, present, and future
Location-based services (LBS) in smart cities have drastically altered the way cities operate, giving a new dimension to the life of citizens. LBS rely on location of a device, where proximity estimation remains at its core. The applications of LBS range from social networking and marketing to vehicle-toeverything communications. In many of these applications, there is an increasing need and trend to learn the physical distance between nearby devices. This paper elaborates upon the current needs of proximity estimation in LBS and compares them against the available Localization and Proximity (LP) finding technologies (LP technologies in short). These technologies are compared for their accuracies and performance based on various different parameters, including latency, energy consumption, security, complexity, and throughput. Hereafter, a classification of these technologies, based on various different smart city applications, is presented. Finally, we discuss some emerging LP technologies that enable proximity estimation in LBS and present some future research areas
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