Trusted Positioning (Canada)

Today's smartphones are powerful devices whose continually increasing processing power and wide array of sensors make them well suited for use as personal navigation devices. In the absence of information from the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), the onboard inertial sensors can be used to provide a relative navigation solution. However, these onboard inertial sensors suffer from the effects of different sensor errors which cause the inertial-only solution to deteriorate rapidly. As such, there is a need to constrain the inertial positioning solution when long term navigation is needed. GNSS positions and velocities, and WiFi positions are the most important forms of updates available for the inertial solution. However, updates from these two sources depend on external signals and may not always be available. A rich source of information about the outside world can be obtained using the device's camera. Nearly all devices have at least one camera which has thus far been largely neglected as a navigation aid for these mobile devices. There are many indoor scenarios that require accurate height estimates. Traditionally, barometers have been used to provide height information. However, not all mobile devices that are equipped with inertial sensors are also equipped with a barometer. As nearly all devices are equipped with at least one camera, it is our aim to use information from the camera to aid the inertial-only solution with appropriate height estimates. Different pattern analysis techniques are used to identify the different scenarios. The results are presented for the following common use cases: (1) single floor texting mode, (2) stairs texting mode, (3) single floor calling mode, (4) stairs calling mode, and (5) fidgeting the phone while standing still on a single floor (i.e. "fidgeting"). For each of these use cases, first the context will be determined and then the relevant information will be used to calculate the height accordingly. This work is patent pending.

Modeling requires representing real world phenomena by mathematical language. To keep the problem tractable the goal is not to produce the most comprehensive descriptive model but to produce the simplest possible model which incorporates the major features of the phenomena of interest. The model is also restricted by the ability of mathematics to describe a phenomenon. This book deals with models which describe the motion of an object on or near the surface of the Earth. This kind of motion is greatly influenced by the geometry of the Earth. There are two broad categories for modeling motion: dynamic and kinematic.

There are contrasting pros and cons to INS and GPS. An INS is a self-contained autonomous navigation system that provides a bandwidth exceeding 200 Hz. It has good short term accuracy and provides attitude information in addition to position and velocity.

Present land vehicle navigation relies mostly on the Global Positioning System (GPS) that may be interrupted or deteriorated in urban areas. In order to obtain continuous positioning services in all environments, GPS can be integrated with inertial sensors and vehicle odometer using Kalman filtering (KF). For car navigation, low-cost positioning solutions based on MEMS-based inertial sensors are utilized. To further reduce the cost, a reduced inertial sensor system (RISS) consisting of only one gyroscope and speed measurement (obtained from the car odometer) is integrated with GPS. The MEMS-based gyroscope measurement deteriorates over time due to different errors like the bias drift. These errors may lead to large azimuth errors and mitigating the azimuth errors requires robust modeling of both linear and nonlinear effects. Therefore, this paper presents a solution based on Parallel Cascade Identification (PCI) module that models the azimuth errors and is augmented to KF. The proposed augmented KF-PCI method can handle both linear and nonlinear system errors as the linear parts of the errors are modeled inside the KF and the nonlinear and residual parts of the azimuth errors are modeled by PCI. The performance of this method is examined using road test experiments in a land vehicle.

Presents a methodology for the design of a learning approach to service quality improvement. Considers the strengths of “action learning”, noting some of the major companies which have utilized this approach, including the British Airports Authority and AT&T. Looks at a typical action learning program which involves aspects such as tackling real problems and working in small groups or “sets”, and notes benefits such as the fact that the programs can be designed to suit the organization and that the brightest people in the company can be challenged to solve critical problems.