Enhanced Stance Phase Detection and Extended Kalman Filtering for Strapdown Pedestrian Dead Reckoning Msc in Mobile and Ubiquito

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Enhanced Stance Phase Detection and Extended Kalman Filtering for Strapdown Pedestrian Dead Reckoning Msc in Mobile and Ubiquito Enhanced Stance Phase Detection and Extended Kalman Filtering for Strapdown Pedestrian Dead Reckoning MSc in Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing Poorna Talkad Sukumar September 2010 ABSTRACT Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) using shoe-mounted inertial sensors is a self-contained navigation technique which could address the needs of emergency responders. An improved PDR system has been implemented in this thesis using an extended Kalman filter (EKF) formulation with periodic zero-velocity updates (ZUPTs). The system has been evaluated for a variety of data sets recorded using the Xsens MTx inertial measurement unit. The PDR system was implemented both with and without using the Xsens's orientation to also determine if we need to use the expensive Xsens device with its `black box' algorithm or if we can use less expensive inertial sensors with our own algorithms. Different stance phase detection methods have also been implemented in this thesis. Contents Table of Contents v List of Figures vii 1 Introduction 1 2 Background and Experimental Setup 4 2.1 Related Work ................................... 4 2.2 Strapdown Inertial Navigation System ..................... 5 2.3 The Extended Kalman Filter ........................... 7 2.4 Data sets used in this thesis ........................... 10 2.4.1 Long corridor ............................... 10 2.4.2 Data collected in University of Twente ................. 11 2.4.3 Biba Workshop .............................. 13 3 Stance Phase Detection and Basic EKF/ZUPTs Pedestrian Tracking using Xsens orientation 15 3.1 ZUPTs and Benefits of using EKF ....................... 16 3.2 INS and EKF Formulation using Xsens orientation .............. 20 3.2.1 Strapdown INS mechanization process ................. 20 3.2.2 The Extended Kalman Filter ...................... 23 3.3 Stance Phase Detection .............................. 26 3.3.1 Using 3D angular rate signal ....................... 28 3.3.2 Using 3D acceleration, 3D angular rate and local acceleration variance 29 3.3.3 Gait phase detection using Hidden Markov Model ........... 33 3.4 Results of the three stance phase detection algorithms ............. 38 3.4.1 Plots with highlighted zero-velocity periods .............. 38 3.4.2 Plots of 2D traces and altitude ..................... 42 3.4.3 Discussion ................................. 49 3.5 Results of the EKF/ZUPTs formulation using Xsens orientation ....... 52 3.6 Filter Tuning ................................... 60 3.7 Summary ..................................... 60 v CONTENTS vi 4 EKF tracking using raw IMU measurements 62 4.1 ZUPTs and ZARUs ................................ 63 4.1.1 Strapdown INS mechanization process ................. 63 4.1.2 The Extended Kalman Filter ...................... 67 4.2 Heuristic Drift Reduction (HDR) ........................ 70 4.3 Orientation Correction using Accelerometer signal ............... 72 4.4 Results ....................................... 76 4.5 Filter Tuning ................................... 88 4.6 Summary ..................................... 89 5 Conclusions 91 5.1 Contributions ................................... 91 5.2 Additional Observations ............................. 92 5.3 Future work .................................... 93 Bibliography 94 A MATLAB Code 98 List of Figures 1.1 Xsens MTx IMU firmly attached to the shoe ................. 3 2.1 Basic principle of an inertial navigation system ................. 6 2.2 Basic principle of an inertial navigation processor ............... 7 2.3 Estimated and actual trajectories for an extended Kalman filter ....... 9 2.4 Path travelled along corridors in InfoLab21 ................... 11 2.5 Ubisense plots for T1 and T2 .......................... 12 2.6 Ubisense plots for T3 and T4 .......................... 13 2.7 Path travelled in Biba workshop ......................... 14 3.1 2D velocity with and without ZUPTs ...................... 17 3.2 Basic principle of an integrated navigation system ............... 18 3.3 Position drift corrected by the EKF during ZUPTs. .............. 19 3.4 Strapdown INS mechanization process ..................... 21 3.5 Accelerometer signal demonstrating the different gait phases. ......... 27 3.6 Gait Cycle ..................................... 27 3.7 Results of the multi-condition stance phase detection algorithm ....... 32 3.8 State transition diagram ............................. 35 3.9 3D acceleration, angular rate and velocity signals highlighting the zero-velocity periods detected by algorithm 1 ......................... 39 3.10 3D acceleration, angular rate and velocity signals highlighting the zero-velocity periods detected by algorithm 2 ......................... 40 3.11 3D acceleration, angular rate and velocity signals highlighting the zero-velocity periods detected by algorithm 3 ......................... 40 3.12 3D velocity plots obtained using algorithm 1 (solid red line) and algorithm 2 (dotted black line) ................................ 41 3.13 Plots of 2D traces and altitude for L1 ...................... 43 3.14 Plots of 2D traces and altitude for L2 ...................... 43 3.15 Plots of 2D traces and altitude for L3 ...................... 44 3.16 Plots of 2D traces and altitude for L4 ...................... 44 3.17 Plots of 2D traces and altitude for T1 ...................... 45 3.18 Plots of 2D traces and altitude for T2 ...................... 46 vii LIST OF FIGURES viii 3.19 Plots of 2D traces and altitude for T3 ...................... 47 3.20 Plots of 2D traces and altitude for T4 ...................... 48 3.21 Plots of 2D traces and altitude for Biba ..................... 49 3.22 Plots of 2D traces and altitude, L1 ....................... 53 3.23 Plots of 2D traces and altitude, L2 ....................... 54 3.24 Plots of 2D traces and altitude, L3 ....................... 54 3.25 Plots of 2D traces and altitude, L4 ....................... 55 3.26 Plots of 2D traces and altitude, T1 ....................... 55 3.27 Plots of 2D traces and altitude, T2 ....................... 56 3.28 Plots of 2D traces and altitude, T3 ....................... 56 3.29 Plots of 2D traces and altitude, T4 ....................... 57 3.30 Plots of 2D traces and altitude, Biba ...................... 57 4.1 Strapdown INS mechanization process ..................... 64 4.2 Plots of 2D traces, L3 .............................. 79 4.3 Plots of altitudes, L3 ............................... 80 4.4 Plots of 2D traces, L4 .............................. 81 4.5 Plots of altitudes, L4 ............................... 82 4.6 Plots of 2D traces and altitudes, T1 ....................... 83 4.7 Plots of 2D traces and altitudes, T2 ....................... 84 4.8 Plots of 2D traces and altitudes, T3 ....................... 85 4.9 Plots of 2D traces and altitudes, T4 ....................... 86 4.10 Plots of 2D traces and altitudes, Biba ...................... 87 Chapter 1 Introduction Location and navigation support is essential in emergency response scenarios. GPS is not available indoors and all the current indoor navigation systems require installation of some infrastructure or an instrumented, marked or pre-mapped environment. Hence, they are impractical for use by emergency responders such as firefighters. Emergency responders must be able to keep track of their locations and reach safety quickly under dangerous conditions such as smoke and power failure [1{4]. Therefore, there is a need for a self-contained navigation system which will work reliably in any indoor or outdoor setting. Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) using shoe-mounted inertial sensors could address the needs of emergency responders. Dead reckoning is a funda- mental method which consists of adding a moving body's measured or calculated change in position to its previous position to obtain its current position. Inertial sensors usually com- prise of three accelerometers and three gyroscopes measuring the accelerations and angular rates in the x, y and z directions respectively. These inertial sensor outputs are integrated to obtain the velocity, position and attitude which are used to determine the current position with respect to a known reference using the dead reckoning method. But unaided inertial navigation systems suffer from drift. The small errors in the ac- 1 2 celeration are integrated into increasingly larger errors in the velocity which are integrated into even larger errors in position. Therefore, the position has to be periodically corrected using techniques such as zero velocity updates (ZUPTs). In pedestrian navigation, the foot alternates between a moving swing phase and a stationary stance phase. Zero velocity up- dates (ZUPTs) are applied during the stance phases since the velocity during those periods should theoretically be zero. ZUPTs limit the growth of the velocity errors in the inertial navigation system. Previous work on PDR include using shoe-mounted inertial sensors and applying periodic ZUPTs [1, 3{8]. An extended Kalman filter (EKF) is also used in some papers to combine the inertial navigation velocity solution with the zero velocity measurements [1,5,6,8]. Using an EKF not only helps in estimating the velocity errors, but the position and attitude errors, and accelerometer and gyro biases are also estimated. But most of the previous papers mentioned above have been able to achieve good tracking only for a few minutes. Also, the inertial sensors used and the environments in which the traces were collected differ among the different implementations. This thesis extends previous work to build
Recommended publications
  • A Personal Dead Reckoning Module Dr
    A Personal Dead Reckoning Module Dr. C. Tom Judd, Point Research Corporation BIOGRAPHY what has been done in vehicular and aircraft applications where inertial navigators are used to bridge the dead Dr. Tom Judd is Chief Scientist at Point Research spots. Corporation. For the past four years he has been responsible for developing and implementing algorithms Dead reckoning has been used for ages to obtain a for dead reckoning. Dr. Judd received his Bachelor of position estimate based on velocity, time, and direction Science degree in Physics from St. Mary’s College of from a starting point. For a person on foot, measuring California, and his Ph.D. in Biophysics from the distance directly using a pedometer is a practical means University of California, Davis. for measuring distance traveled. Take the pace count and multiply by the distance for each pace, and you get the ABSTRACT total distance traveled. Pace count has in the past been a an important measure of distance over land. The word Point Research Corporation of Santa Ana, CA has mile originates from the Latin word for one thousand, developed a new lightweight miniature Dead Reckoning milie, the number of paces in a mile. Module (DRM) for drift-free navigation by personnel on foot. The traditional compass and pace-count dead There are several advantages in weight, size, power reckoning navigation has been replaced by a continuous consumption, and accuracy to using electronic dead hands-free module. An internal solid-state 3 dimensional reckoning over a conventional inertial navigator. Inertial compass provides a robust tilt-corrected heading.
    [Show full text]
  • Pacific Parables Final
    Pacific Parables Raqs Media Collective [Address to the Pacific Rim New Media Summit, ISEA2006 and Zero One Festival, San Jose, August 2006. Published in in PLACE: Local Knowledge and New Media Practice, Edited by Danny Butt, Jon Bywater & Nova Paul. Cambridge Scholars Press, Newcastle, 2008] The Pacific Rim as a Fiction of Place The Pacific Rim is a fiction about place, a filter through which you can look at the world if you choose to and confer more or less arbitrary meanings on to a set of latitudes and longitudes. There have been previous fictions about place straddling this water, one was called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and unleashed havoc in the name of the solidarity of oppressed peoples of Asia, another thought of the Pacific as a Californian frontier, a kind of Wild Blue West. A third spoke French, and drew naked women in Tahiti, and dropped hydrogen bombs in the water. A fourth, the South Pacific Bubble, was one of the first episodes of global financial speculation that shaped the turbulence of the economy of our modern era. Meanwhile, Sikh peasants from the Punjab, Chinese railroad workers from Canton, Agricultural workers and sugarcane cultivators from the hinterland of North India traversed the ocean, Mexicans swam, or walked along the coastline, Australian sailors, New Zealanders on whaling ships, Japanese factory workers, Filipina nurses and itinerant Pacific Islander communities traversed the Pacific, and the wider world, buffeted by the rough winds of recent history. They grew fruit trees in Napa valley, felled timber in British Columbia, mined tin in Peru, pressed grapes in Chile and made what some of choose to call the Pacific Rim what it is today.
    [Show full text]
  • Mebs Sea-Man
    NYNMINST 3120.2 MILITARY EMERGENCY BOAT SERVICE SEAMANSHIP MANUAL MEBS SEA-MAN NYNMINST 3120.2 MEBS SEA-MAN TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER SUBJECT PAGE 1 Boat Characteristics 6 Boat Nomenclature and Terminology 6 Boat Construction 7 Displacement 8 Three Hull Types 9 Principle Boat Parts 11 2 Marlinespike Seamanship 15 Line 15 Knots and Splices 20 Basic Knots 20 Splices 33 Whipping 36 Deck Fittings 38 Line Handling 39 3 Stability 43 Gravity 43 Buoyancy 43 Righting Moment and Capsizing 46 4 Boat Handling 52 Forces 52 Propulsion and Steering 54 Inboard Engines 55 Outboard Motors and Stern Drives 58 Waterjets 60 Basic Maneuvering 61 Vessel Turning Characteristics 67 Using Asymmetric or Opposed Propulsion 70 Performing Single Screw Compound Maneuvering 70 Maneuvering To/From Dock 71 Maneuvering Alongside Another Vessel 77 Anchoring 78 5 Survival Equipment 85 Personal Flotation Device 85 Type I PFD 85 3 NYNMINST 3120.2 MEBS SEA-MAN Type II PFD 85 Type III PFD 86 Type IV PFD 88 Type V PFD 88 6 Weather and Oceanography 90 Wind 90 Thunderstorms 92 Waterspouts 93 Fog 93 Ice 94 Forecasting 95 Oceanography 98 Waves 98 Surf 101 Currents 102 7 Navigation 105 The Earth and its Coordinates 105 Reference Lines of the Earth 105 Parallels 107 Meridians 109 Nautical Charts 113 Soundings 114 Basic Chart Information 115 Chart Symbols and Abbreviations 119 Magnetic Compass 127 Piloting 130 Dead Reckoning 138 Basic Elements of Piloting 139 8 Aids to Navigation 152 U.S. Aids to Navigation System 152 Lateral and Cardinal Significance 152 AtoN Identification 154 9 First
    [Show full text]
  • Gising Dead-Reckoning; Historic Maritime Maps in GIS Menne KOSIAN
    13 th International Congress „Cultural Heritage and New Technologies“ Vienna, 2008 GISing dead-reckoning; historic maritime maps in GIS Menne KOSIAN Abstract: The Dutch mapmakers of the 16th and 17th century were famous for their accurate and highly detailed maps. Several atlases were produced and were the pride and joy of many a captain, whether Dutch, English, French, fighting or merchant navy. For modern eyes, these maps often seem warped and inaccurate; besides, in those times it still was impossible to accurately determine ones longitude, so how could these maps be accurate at all? But since these maps were actually used to navigate on, and (most of) the ships actually made it to their destination and back, the information on the maps should have been accurate enough. Using old navigational techniques and principles it is possible to place these maps, and the wealth of information depicted on them, in a modern GIS. That way these old basic-data not only provides us with an insight in the development of our rich maritime landscape over the centuries, but also gives an almost personal insight in the mind of the captains using them and the command structure of the fleets dominating the high seas. Keywords: historic Dutch maritime maps, georeferencing historic data, maritime archaeology Introduction The Dutch maps from the 16th and 17th centuries were famous for their accuracy and detail level. These charts were also very popular with seafarers, both in the Netherlands, as in other seafaring nations of that time. Many of those charts had, in addition to the editions for actual navigational use also editions for presentation, often beautifully coloured and bound together into atlases.
    [Show full text]
  • Science and Seventeenth Century Navigation DWAYNE R
    SOCIAL SCIENCES -------------- ------ Science and Seventeenth Century Navigation DWAYNE R. MASON, Norman Until the advent of electronic navigational devices there had been only two important techniques for determining a ship's position when out of sight of land: dead-reckoning and celestial navigation. Dead-reckon­ ing consisted of cumulative plots ot d.t8tancee and dJrection ot travel on a plane chart. The navigator plotted each segment, beg1nn1ng at the end ot the previous segment and, it his information concerning the ship's progreu were correct and. If he had plotted carefully, he was able to make an accurate estimate ot his position at any time. Information conceming the ship's progress was supplied, in part, by the shlp's compau but, for the most part, the navigator had to rely upon his own skill in estimating speed, leeway, and the effect of currents.' The theoretical framework upon which celestial navigation was founded was at leut as old as Ptolemy. Almageat. In parts three and four of Book I, Ptolemy hypothesizes the spherical movement of the heavens and the sphericity ot the earth. As arguments for these hypotheses, Ptolemy asserted that the ditfereJ1Ce. in the recorded times ot ob8ervattona of celestial phenomena was detenninecS by the differences in the longitudes ot the places of observation. The dlt­ ferences in the observed altltudN of known stara were due to the dlfter­ eDCe8 in the latitudes of the placea of Observation.' By taking the eleva- 148 PROC. OF THE OKLA. ACAD. OF SCI. FOR 1963 uon. at zenith, of a known .tar and comparing that value with the one Jlven In an ephemerlde8, prepared tor a place of known latitude, the navlptor could compute the latitude of h1I position.
    [Show full text]
  • AI-IMU Dead-Reckoning
    1 AI-IMU Dead-Reckoning ∗ y ∗ Martin BROSSARD , Axel BARRAU and Silvere` BONNABEL ∗MINES ParisTech, PSL Research University, Centre for Robotics, 60 Bd Saint-Michel, 75006 Paris, France ySafran Tech, Groupe Safran, Rue des Jeunes Bois-Chateaufort,ˆ 78772, Magny Les Hameaux Cedex, France Abstract—In this paper we propose a novel accurate method for dead-reckoning of wheeled vehicles based only on an Inertial 400 benchmark IMU proposed Measurement Unit (IMU). In the context of intelligent vehicles, robust and accurate dead-reckoning based on the IMU may prove useful to correlate feeds from imaging sensors, to safely navigate through obstructions, or for safe emergency stops in the extreme case of exteroceptive sensors failure. The key components of 200 the method are the Kalman filter and the use of deep neural GPS outage networks to dynamically adapt the noise parameters of the filter. The method is tested on the KITTI odometry dataset, and our end only dead-reckoning inertial method based on the IMU accurately ) 0 estimates 3D position, velocity, orientation of the vehicle and m self-calibrates the IMU biases. We achieve on average a 1.10% ( y start translational error and the algorithm competes with top-ranked methods which, by contrast, use LiDAR or stereo vision. We make our implementation open-source at: 200 − https://github.com/mbrossar/ai-imu-dr Index Terms—localization, deep learning, invariant extended Kalman filter, KITTI dataset, inertial navigation, inertial mea- 400 surement unit − I. INTRODUCTION 0 200 400 600 800 NTELLIGENT vehicles need to know where they are x (m) located in the environment, and how they are moving throughI it.
    [Show full text]
  • Improved Pedestrian Dead Reckoning Positioning with Gait Parameter Learning
    Improved Pedestrian Dead Reckoning Positioning With Gait Parameter Learning Parinaz Kasebzadeh, Carsten Fritsche, Gustaf Hendeby, Fredrik Gunnarsson and Fredrik Gustafsson Linköping University Post Print N.B.: When citing this work, cite the original article. Original Publication: Parinaz Kasebzadeh, Carsten Fritsche, Gustaf Hendeby, Fredrik Gunnarsson and Fredrik Gustafsson, Improved Pedestrian Dead Reckoning Positioning With Gait Parameter Learning, 2016, Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Information Fusion, (), , 379-385. http:// ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=7527913 Copyright: ISIF http://isif.org Postprint available at: Linköping University Electronic Press http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-130174 Improved Pedestrian Dead Reckoning Positioning With Gait Parameter Learning Parinaz Kasebzadeh, Carsten Fritsche, Gustaf Hendeby, Fredrik Gunnarssony, Fredrik Gustafsson Department of Electrical Engineering, Linkoping¨ University, Linkoping,¨ Sweden Email: ffi[email protected] y Ericsson Research, Linkoping,¨ Sweden, Email: [email protected] Abstract—We consider personal navigation systems in devices phones. These systems use gyroscopes to determine the head- equipped with inertial sensors and Global Positioning System ing and accelerometers to estimate gait parameters such as the (GPS), where we propose an improved Pedestrian Dead Reckon- number of steps and step lengths. ing (PDR) algorithm that learns gait parameters in time intervals when position estimates are available, for instance from GPS or For estimating the gait parameters, it is important to detect an indoor positioning system (IPS). A novel filtering approach step occurrences and their length. These gait characteristics is proposed that is able to learn internal gait parameters in depend on individual walking patterns and vary between the PDR algorithm, such as the step length and the step people.
    [Show full text]
  • Pedestrian Dead Reckoning: a Basis for Personal Positioning
    PROCEEDINGS OF THE 3rd WORKSHOP ON POSITIONING, NAVIGATION AND COMMUNICATION (WPNC’06) Pedestrian Dead Reckoning: A Basis for Personal Positioning St´ephane Beauregard and Harald Haas School of Engineering and Science International University Bremen 28759 Bremen, Germany e-mail: {s.beauregard, h.haas}@iu-bremen.de Abstract - Generic indoor personal positioning with an accuracy better than 10m error is still a challenging research issue. It is well known that the key to solving this problem is the combination of different positioning techniques. In this paper, a combined approach of pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) and GPS positioning is followed. An acceleration sensor provides signals with which a neural network is trained in order to make step length predictions for relative indoor positioning. An experimental system is developed and the obtained results show that the accumulated error over a 4km walk is approximately only 2%. Indoor PDR positioning results are also described. 1 Introduction Accurate relative as well as absolute personal positioning can be considered a primary factor for service differentiation and personalisation in future mobile communications. Accurate po- sitioning is an important and emerging technology for commercial, public-safety and military applications [1]. Benefiting from accurate positioning are services for tracking people with spe- cial needs, (e.g. children, the elderly, prison inmates, the blind [2]), policemen, and firemen as well as the regulatory ’911/112’ emergency response systems. The innumerable commercial Location Based Services that have proposed would also benefit. In terms of service adaptability and reconfigurability in wireless networks and systems, personal positioning services could be used to improve indoor Radio Resource Management by providing location-assisted handover, dynamically identifying traffic hot-spots and allocating resources on demand, for example, using adaptive/steerable antennas, and adaptive network topology configuration and intelligent rout- ing in ad-hoc networks.
    [Show full text]
  • Design and Performance Analysis of a Low-Cost Aided Dead Reckoning Navigator
    DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF A LOW-COST AIDED DEAD RECKONING NAVIGATOR a dissertation submitted to the department of aeronautics and astronautics and the committee on graduate studies of stanford university in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy Demoz Gebre-Egziabher February 2004 c Copyright 2004 by Demoz Gebre-Egziabher All Rights Reserved ii I certify that I have read this thesis and that in my opin- ion it is fully adequate, in scope and in quality, as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Professor J. David Powell (Principal Advisor) I certify that I have read this thesis and that in my opin- ion it is fully adequate, in scope and in quality, as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Professor Per K. Enge I certify that I have read this thesis and that in my opin- ion it is fully adequate, in scope and in quality, as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Professor Bradford W. Parkinson Approved for the University Committee on Graduate Studies: Dean of Graduate Studies iii Abstract The Federal Aviation Administration is leading the National Airspace System modernization effort, in part, by supplanting traditional air traffic services with the Global Positioning System (GPS) aided by the Wide and Local Area Augmentation Systems (WAAS & LAAS). Making GPS the primary-means of navigation will en- hance safety, flexibility and efficiency of operations for all aircraft ranging from single engine general aviation aircraft to complex commercial jet-liners. This transformation of the National Airspace System will be gradual and the build-up to a primary-means GPS capability is expected to occur concurrently with the de-commissioning of a sig- nificant number of existing ground-based navigational facilities.
    [Show full text]
  • A Review of Aviation Navigation Systems
    A Review of Aviation Navigation Systems … from old W. J. Overholser's barn to NextGen and Metroplex By Gerald A. Silver* Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council January 2017 Ver 1.0 Summary of this presentation This presentation describes various aircraft navigation systems ranging from simple onboard visual navigation, called Pilotage, through to sophisticated Satellite Systems. PART 1 describes Dead Reckoning, Radio Navigation, Electronic Navigation including GPS and Inertial systems. PART 2 describes the FAA’s newest NextGen and Metroplex systems under consideration and noise related issues. PART 1 Dead Reckoning, Radio Navigation, Electronic Navigation including GPS and Inertial systems Types of Navigation Systems Pilotage Dead Reckoning Radio Navigation ADF VOR/DME/RNAV Electronic Navigation Loran Inertial GPS Celestial Aviation navigation dates back to the early 1900’s Pilots flying from point A to point B used recognizable landmarks such as buildings, lakes, rivers, mountain tops and the like. Pilotage was a visual process of calculating one's position by traveling from one recognizable landmark to another. It did not use astronomical observations or electronic navigation methods. Pilotage Flying from Point A to Point B Dead Reckoning In navigation, dead reckoning is the process of calculating one's current position by using a previously determined position, or fix, and advancing that position based upon known or estimated speeds over elapsed time and course. Area Navigation (RNAV) Generic name for a system that permits point-to-point flight Onboard computer that computes a position, track, and groundspeed VOR/DME Loran Inertial GPS Automatic direction finder ADF ADF equipment determines the direction or bearing relative to the aircraft by using a combination of directional and non- directional antennae to sense the direction in which the combined signal is strongest.
    [Show full text]
  • U-Blox' 3D Dead Reckoning for Vehicle Applications
    WHITEPAPER u-blox’ 3D Dead Reckoning for Vehicle Applications An advanced solution for modern urban navigation and positioning Whitepaper by: Uffe Pless, Product Manager, u-blox Dr. Alexander Somieski, Software Design Engineer Navigation, u-blox Michael Ammann, VP Platform Partnerships, u-blox Carl Fenger, Product Communications Manager, u-blox January 2014 UBX-13005008 Table of contents Executive Summary 3 3D Automotive Dead Reckoning: a new dimension in navigation 4 Challenges to urban navigation 4 A solution: GNSS positioning enhanced with 3D Dead Reckoning 5 Improved performance in multi-level highway interchanges 6 The u-blox 3D Automotive Dead Reckoning (3D ADR) solution 6 Benefits of u-blox’ 3D ADR solution for first-mount applications 7 Drive test: park house 8 u-blox M8 3D ADR - Implementation 8 Features of u-blox 3D ADR 9 About u-blox 10 u-blox’ 3D Dead Reckoning for Vehicle Applications | 2 Executive Summary Increasingly dense urban environments, park houses and multi-level inter- changes pose a significant problem to navigation systems based on the reception of extremely weak satellite navigation signals. As ever more systems (e.g. car navigation, road pricing, fleet management, emergency services, etc.) depend on reliable, uninterrupted positioning and navigation, “3-Dimensional Dead Reckoning” GNSS, the ability to calculate a position in the X, Y, and Z axis when satellites signals are blocked or impeded is becom- ing increasingly important. This paper describes such a solution based on u-blox’ sensor-fusion technology. u-blox’ 3D Dead Reckoning for Vehicle Applications | 3 3D Automotive Dead Reckoning: a new dimension in navigation 3-Dimensional Automotive Dead Reckoning (“3D ADR”) aids traditional GPS/GNSS navigation via intelligent algorithms based on distance, direc- tion and elevation changes made during satellite signal interruption.
    [Show full text]
  • A Collection of Curricula for the STARLAB Lewis & Clark Cylinder
    A Collection of Curricula for the STARLAB Lewis & Clark Cylinder Including: The Celestial Naviation of Lewis & Clark: How They Knew Where They Were in the Middle of Nowhere by Eileen M. Starr, Ph.D. ©2008 by Science First/STARLAB, 95 Botsford Place, Buffalo, NY 14216. www.starlab.com. All rights reserved. Curriculum Guide Contents The Celestial Navigation of Lewis & Clark .................3 22. Moon Phases as Seen from the Earth ................48 Introduction ......................................................3 23. How Much Does the Moon Move Each Night? ...50 Synopsis of Curriculum Activities ...............................4 24. Finding Longitude Using Equal Altitudes of the Sun ................................................................52 Dead Reckoning ................................................4 25. Finding Longitude Using a Lunar Eclipse ............55 Latitude and Longitude .......................................4 26. Finding Longitude Using the Moon and a Star ....56 Finding Latitude .................................................5 Recommended Resources .......................................58 Finding Longitude ..............................................6 Constellation and Star Information ..........................61 Cylinder Reference Charts .......................................8 The Nine Navigation Stars of Lewis & Clark ............61 1. Finding the North Star, the North Celestial Pole and Directions ...............................................10 The Constellations of the Zodiac .............................61
    [Show full text]