Jonsson, William

Indoor navigation for autonomous vehicles and robots is an area of research and development with great promises for both current and future applications. Examples include robots assisting humans in indoor tasks, and industrial applications such as warehouse management using autonomous robots [Jensen, 2001]. This project examines the possibilities and limitations of navigating an autonomous vehicle in an enclosed area with the aid of visual recognition software and distancing sensors. The navigat...

Lyttle, David Nolan

The work presented in this dissertation focuses on the use of computational and mathematical models to investigate how mammalian brains construct and maintain stable representations of space and location. Recordings of the activities of cells in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex have provided strong, direct evidence that these cells and brain areas are involved in generating internal representations of the location of an animal in space. The emphasis of the first two portions of the disserta...

Pant, Vivek

Intelligent systems with even the bare minimum of sophistication require extensive computational power and complex processing units. At the same time, small insects like flies are adept at visual navigation, target pursuit, motionless hovering flight, and obstacle avoidance. Thus, biology provides engineers with an unconventional approach to solve complicated engineering design problems. Computational models of the neuronal architecture of the insect brain can provide algorithms for the developm...

Thomas, Kevin Garth

The purpose of this paper is to examine questions about the role of the hippocampal formation in spatial cognition and spatial navigation. Specifically, Study 1 and Study 2 show that patients with unilateral language nondominant anterior temporal lobectomy (ATL) show impairments on tasks assessing cognitive mapping. Study 3 shows that the ability of these patients to navigate a virtual environment (VE) by means of cognitive maps is disrupted. Study 4 shows that, under normal circumstances, healt...

Williamson, Walton R., Speyer, Jason L., Jones, Charles H.

ITC/USA 2005 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-First Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2005 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / During flight tests and during post-processing of flight data, a need exists to validate that all sensors are working properly and that data is valid after experimentation. Analytic redundancy methods enable data validation using multiple, dissimilar instruments processed through the vehicle dy...

Williamson, Walton R., Speyer, Jason L., Glenn, Greg, Dang, Vu, Xiao, Terri

ITC/USA 2008 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Fourth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 27-30, 2008 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / Health monitoring during flight tests provides a means of data validation in flight. It is possible to design a data acquisition system such that the available instruments incorporate redundancy through analytic relationships. This analytic redundancy may be exploited in order to a...

Leite, Nelson Paiva Oliveira, Rocha, Israel Cordeiro, Walter, Fernando, Hemerly, Elder Moreira

ITC/USA 2008 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-Fourth Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 27-30, 2008 / Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California / The real time acquisition and monitoring of the aircraft trajectory parameters is essential for the safety of the flight tests campaigns held by most of the tests centers. Nowadays the us age of an airborne GPS receiver as the main sensor for these parameters has become the preferr...

Yu, Wayne Hong

<p> The potential for pulsars as a navigation source has been studied since their discovery in 1967. X-ray pulsar navigation (XNAV) is a celestial navigation system that uses the consistent timing nature of X-ray photons from milli-second pulsars (MSP) to perform space navigation. Much of the challenge of XNAV comes from the faint signal, availability, and distant nature of pulsars. This thesis is the study of pulsar XNAV measurements for extended Kalman filter (EKF) tracking performance within ...

Dongkai, Yang, Yanhong, Kou, Zhi, Chen, Qishan, Zhang, Aigong, Xu

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Global Positioning System (GPS) was analyzed in terms of its repeatable accuracy, UTM projection for 2D plane coordinate system, satellite visibility performance and the horizontal dilution of positioning (HDOP). The principle of Dead Reckoning together with body coordinate system transformation was introduced. The complementary performance of GPS and DR, and GPS/...

Beyers, Coenraad Johannes

Thesis (MScEng)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This project concerns motion planning for a rotary wing UAV, where vehicle controllers are already in place, and map data is readily available to a collision detection module. In broad terms, the goal of the motion planning algorithm is to provide a safe (i.e. obstacle free) flight path between an initial- and goal waypoint. This project looks at two specific motion planning algorithms, the Rapidly Exploring Random Tree (or ...

Boje, Ellenor Petronella

Thesis (M.Tech.) - Central University of Technology, Free State, 2007 / The latest technological trend worldwide, is automation. Reducing human labour and introducing robots to do the work is a pure business decision. The reason for automating a plant can be some, or all, of the following: Improve productivity Reduce labour and equipment costs Reduce product damage System reliability can be monitored Improves plant safety When the automation process is started, Automatic Guided...

Kotze, Benjamin, Johannes

Thesis (M. Tech. (Engineering: Electrical)) -- Central University of technology, Free State, 2013 / Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGVs) are being used more frequently in a manufacturing environment. These AGVs are navigated in many different ways, utilising multiple types of sensors for detecting the environment like distance, obstacles, and a set route. Different algorithms or methods are then used to utilise this environmental information for navigation purposes applied onto the AGV for control ...

Bhonsle, Dhruvjit Vilas

With the development of Advanced Driving Assistance Systems (ADAS) vehicles have undergone better experience in field of safety, better driving and enhanced vehicle systems. Today these systems are one of the fastest growing in automotive domain. Physical parameters like map data, vehicle position and speed are crucial for the advancement of functionalities implemented for ADAS. All the navigation map databases are stored in proprietary format. So for the ADAS application to access this data an ...

Cai, Wentao

Most onboard navigation systems employ CD or DVD-based data storage for digital maps and points of interest. However, updating and retrieving such information is a major challenge for commercial information providers, and for drivers. In this master thesis, we propose a framework for a new generation of onboard navigation systems that utilize modern telecommunication and information retrieval approaches to access location-awareness information automatically via the Web. The aim is to build agent...

McCunn, Lindsay J.

The social and neurosciences are moving toward a conceptualization of the psychological construct of sense of place in relation with spatial cognition, place imageability, and meaning. To help advance progress, this dissertation proposes a conceptual framework of sense of place that includes variables of spatial navigational strategy (i.e., egocentric and allocentric) and place imageability using notions of edges, paths, landmarks, districts, nodes. Three studies using different methods test...

Law, Andrew M.

To perform close proximity operations under a low-gravity environment, relative and absolute positions are vital information to the maneuver. Hence navigation is inseparably integrated in space travel. Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) is presented as an optical navigation method around small celestial bodies. Optical Navigation uses visual observation instruments such as a camera to acquire useful data and determine spacecraft position. The required input data for operation is merely a single imag...

Ernst, Johannes

One of the major challenges for helicopter pilots are low level flights and landings in degraded visual environments (DVE). Without proper assistance systems, the pilots are prone to lose their situational awareness (SA) when fog, heavy precipitation, limited sunlight and stirred-up sand or snow degrades their view. In recent years, various synthetic and enhanced vision systems were de-veloped so as to assist the pilots in these demanding situations. This work enhances the existing sys-tems by p...

Korrapati, Hemanth

Dans le cadre de la robotique mobile, des progrès significatifs ont été obtenus au cours des trois dernières décennies pour la cartographie et la localisation. La plupart des projets de recherche traitent du problème de SLAM métrique. Les techniques alors développées sont sensibles aux erreurs liées à la dérive ce qui restreint leur utilisation à des environnements de petite échelle. Dans des environnements de grande taille, l'utilisation de cartes topologiques, qui sont indépendantes de l'infor...

Reis, Saulo-Davi Soares e

REIS, Saulo Davi Soares e. Local and global effects on navigation in small-world networks and explosive percolation. 2012. 86 f. Tese (Doutorado em Física) - Programa de Pós-Graduação em Física, Departamento de Física, Centro de Ciências, Universidade Federal do Ceará, Fortaleza, 2012. / Submitted by Edvander Pires (edvanderpires@gmail.com) on 2015-06-16T20:35:22Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2012_tese_sdsreis.pdf: 3097854 bytes, checksum: 3798beb23c0415893113a8072fc802fe (MD5) / Approved for entry into...

Qu, M. (Min)

As technology advances rapidly, computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) approaches are more and more implemented in educational contexts. However, the assessment of learning processes in CSCL is still a challenge for both teachers and students. Trace data (e.g., from log files), which is objective and can be collected in an unobtrusive way, provides great opportunity to investigate and assess learning process. The present study explored high school students’ (N = 12) navigation behav...

Sherrill, Katherine Rose McKnight

Path integration is a navigational process that humans and animals use to track changes in their position and orientation. Animal and computational studies suggest that a spatially-tuned navigation system supports path integration, yet this system is not well understood in humans. Here, the prediction was tested that path integration mechanisms and goal-directed navigation in humans would recruit the same key brain regions within the parietal cortex and medial temporal lobes as predicted by anim...

Lin, Cheng-Chieh

Thesis (Sc.D.)--Boston University PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / Parkinson's disease (PD), traditionally regarded as a motor system disorder, has also been found to result in v...

Donaldson, Aaron Paul, 1980-

xii, 92 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / The purpose ofthis paper is to advocate Conflict Navigation as a new pedagogy aimed at uniting co-curricular debate educators in the United States. Contemporary collegiate debate demonstrates a crisis in pedagogy as seen in a history of "fractionation through structural fortification". This lack of a sustainable pedagogical community has proven to cri...

Olsson, Mattias

This thesis extends previous work on navigational aidingof groups of aircraft, primarily intended for the fighter SAAB JAS 39 Gripen,as long as an aircraft gets GPS signals, it is easy to estimate position, but theGPS is relatively easy to jam, rendering alternative methods of positioning necessary.To use internal sensors measuring accelerations and angular velocities is agood replacement on short terms, but gives a drift in positioning over longer timeperiods. To resolve these issues, we review...

James, Sisa

Includes bibliographical references. / This dissertation addresses the autonomous localisation and navigation problem in the context of an underground mining environment. This kind of environment has little or no features as well as no access to GPS or stationary towers, which are usually used for navigation. In addition dust and debris may hinder optical methods for ranging. This study looks at the feasibility of using randomly distributed RFID tags to autonomously navigate in this environment....

Al-Awami, Ali K.

Latest developments in electron microscopy (EM) technology produce high resolution images that enable neuro-scientists to identify and put together the complex neural connections in a nervous system. However, because of the massive size and underlying complexity of this kind of data, processing, navigation and analysis suffer drastically in terms of time and effort. In this work, we propose the use of state-of- the-art navigation techniques, such as dynamic insets, built on a peta-scale volume v...

ANDERSSON, PHILIP, KUGELBERG, EDVIN

With the market for autonomous home assistants steadily growing, reasons for the development of new ways of communicating with the robot assistants have emerged. This thesis aims to develop a system wherein a human can draw instructions for the robot to interpret and follow or perform. An autonomous robot based on an Arduino board was built. Software for pattern recognition through a camera was developed and tested for precision and efficiency. The device was able to read a command drawn on a sh...

Sadhu, Tanmana

An issue of concern for maritime safety when operating a small to medium-sized sailboat is that the presence of hazards in the navigational route in the form of floating logs can lead to a severe collision if undetected. As a precautionary measure to prevent such a collision with a log, a 2D vision-based detection system is proposed. We take a combined approach involving predictive mapping by linear regression and saliency detection. This approach is found to overcome specific issues related to ...

Stauch, Sebastian

Docking is one of the crucial key elements in many aerospace applications and missions where despite all endeavors and precautions accidents and incidents occur far too often. Those events can lead in the worst case scenario to a total loss of the space system and payload. To better understand, manage and control those situations and to test and simulate the docking process between two spacecrafts, the space maneuvering and docking facility has been built and developed by the chair of aerospace ...

Rustrian, Wilmer

<p> Small scale unmanned underwater vehicles provide an opportunity to safely and efficiently complete tasks such as boat hull inspection and subsea development survey. These Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) can be made more efficient if navigating underwater autonomously. This requires the development of highly accurate navigation and control algorithms, which, in turn, require a high-fidelity dynamic model of the vehicle based on first principles and validated by empirical data.</p><p> In t...

Fei, Peng, Pingfang, Zheng, Qishan, Zhang, Zhongkan, Liu

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / In this paper, a devising scheme of Autonomous Vehicle Location and Navigation System is introduced firstly. Then, several key technologies used in the devising scheme are presented, which includes a data fusion method based on extended decentralized kalman filter technology, a map-matching method used to compensate the positioning error, and a digital map data p...

Fei, Peng, Qishan, Zhang, Zhongkan, Liu

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 23-26, 2000 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / Map matching method plays an important role in vehicle location and navigation systems. It employs the information in a digital map to compensate the positioning error. This paper presents a fuzzy-logic-based probabilistic map-matching algorithm used in GPS/INS integrated navigation systems, in which the reliability degree of map matching resolution is giv...

Nilsen, Peter W.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 18-20, 1977 / Hyatt House Hotel, Los Angeles, California / The present baseline Space Shuttle navigation system is comprised of several separate subsystems: TDRSS doppler ranging, TACAN (Tactical Air Navigation), MSBLS (Microwave Scanning Beam Landing System), and ground tracking. With the advent of the DOD development of the GPS, it may be possible to replace several of these subsystems with an on-board GPS navigation system. However, ...

Magree, Daniel Paul

The reliance of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) on GPS and other external navigation aids has become a limiting factor for many missions. UAVs are now physically able to fly in many enclosed or obstructed environments, due to the shrinking size and weight of electronics and other systems. These environments, such as urban canyons or enclosed areas, often degrade or deny external signals. Furthermore, many of the most valuable potential missions for UAVs are in hostile or disaster areas, where na...

Northcutt, Brandon D.

There is a large gap between the visual capabilities of biological organisms and visual capabilities of autonomous robots. Even the most simple of flying insects is able to fly within complex environments, locate food, avoid obstacles and elude predators with seeming ease. This stands in stark contrast to even the most advanced of modern ground based or flying autonomous robots, which are only capable of autonomous navigation within simple environments and will fail spectacularly if the expected...

Zentner, Christian

Companies, that aim to expand their customer base, will find it important to advertisenew products at exhibitions. However, the huge, international exhibitions that arecommon nowadays, are a hassle for visitors, vendors and organisers likewise. Due tothe size, a lot of information needs to be published for the visitors, so that they canfind their way across the exhibition area, locate the stands they are interested in andexchange their business information. In a digital age, where almost every p...

Song, Wen

Master of Science / Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering / Steve Warren / Activity recognition can be an important part of human health awareness. Many benefits can be generated from the recognition results, including knowledge of activity intensity as it relates to wellness over time. Various activity-recognition techniques have been presented in the literature, though most address simple activity-data collection and off-line analysis. More sophisticated real-time identification is l...

El Hakimi, Wissam

The current lateral skull base surgery is largely invasive since it requires wide exposure and direct visualization of anatomical landmarks to avoid damaging critical structures. A multi-port approach aiming to reduce such invasiveness has been recently investigated. Thereby three canals are drilled from the skull surface to the surgical region of interest: the first canal for the instrument, the second for the endoscope, and the third for material removal or an additional instrument. The transi...

Zhao, Yingwei

The endeavours in improving the performance of a conventional non-differential GPS/MEMS IMU tightly-coupled navigation system through filter design, involving nonlinear filtering methods, inertial sensors' stochastic error modelling and the carrier phase implementation, are described and introduced in this thesis. The main work is summarised as follows. Firstly, the performance evaluation of a recently developed nonlinear filtering method, the Cubature Kalman filter (CKF), is analysed based ...

Gradin, Jesper

In this thesis a system for aided inertial navigation (aided INS or AINS) has been testedthrough a number of kinematic experiments. In the experiments, data was collected andpost-processed by different methods. The system was built up by an IMU (inertial measurementunit) aided by a GPS receiver and an odometer. To fuse and filter the sensor dataa Kalman filter from the AINS Matlab Toolbox has been used.The following equipment was used• iNAV-RQH; IMU from iMAR• System 4000SSE; GPS receiver from T...

Sjanic, Zoran

Small and medium sized Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are today used in military missions, and will in the future find many new application areas such as surveillance for exploration and security. To enable all these foreseen applications, the UAV's have to be cheap and of low weight, which restrict the sensors that can be used for navigation and surveillance. This thesis investigates several aspects of how fusion of navigation and imaging sensors can improve both tasks at a level that would req...

Mukka, Nagaraju

The objective of this thesis is to design a model for a multi global navigation satellite system using Simulink. It explains a design procedure which includes the models for transmitter and receiver for two different navigation systems. To overcome the problem, where less number of satellites are visible to determine location degrades the performance of any positioning system significantly, this research has done to make use of multi GNSS satellite signals in one navigation receiver.

Cosgun, Akansel

There are millions of robots in operation around the world today, and almost all of them operate on factory floors in isolation from people. However, it is now becoming clear that robots can provide much more value assisting people in daily tasks in human environments. Perhaps the most fundamental capability for a mobile robot is navigating from one location to another. Advances in mapping and motion planning research in the past decades made indoor navigation a commodity for mobile robots. Yet,...

KARLÉRUS, MIKAELA, TÖRNEMAN, BEATA

The increasing demand of making the roads safer has trigged a lot of companies to develop complete self-driving cars. A self-driving car requires a great number of different sensors as gyros, radars, GPS, tachymeters etc. and advanced software. This thesis will focus on the possibilities of using only light sensing devices for a tracking robot and examine the advantages and disadvantages of this. The purpose is to investigate which type of light sensor is more suitable for a tracking robot and w...

Singh, M.

Cooperation has been identified as an essential requirement for the strategic performance of air transport organisations. From an academic perspective, the debate on theory and practice of such cooperation mainly centres on questions regarding aspects of the increasingly strategic alliances among airlines. Recent developments in the air navigation service (ANS) industry, point towards a new organisational philosophy for ANS provision, which would incorporate the concept of international cooperat...

Wzorek, Mariusz

Unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) are an important future technology with early generations already being used in many areas of application encompassing both military and civilian domains. This thesis proposes a number of integration techniques for combining control-based navigation with more abstract path planning functionality for UASs. These techniques are empirically tested and validated using an RMAX helicopter platform used in the UASTechLab at Linköping University. Although the thesis focu...

Radzicki, Vincent R., Rhajagopal, Abhejit

Advances in planning and controls algorithms for Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles (UAVs) have led to a substantial increase in a wide variety of applications. An important task for UAVs is au-tomated high-precision homing-and-docking. This requires the UAV to autonomously estimate its relative bearing to the home docking station and plan its optimal approach accordingly. This paper presents the design of homing and navigation system for UAVs that can operate in near-field scenarios. The system inco...

Lee, Hua, Radzicki, Vincent

This paper is the summary of a sequence of research tasks in the area of 3D bearing-angle estimation for UUV homing and docking exercises. The main focus is to simplify the concept as well as computation efficiency of the homing and docking tasks, by elevating the estimation modality from the conventional twin-receiver configuration to the 2D circular arrays. The objective is to utilize the multi-element receiver array for the entire navigation procedure, including bearing-angle estimation, opti...

Ohnishi, Motoya

This thesis presents a safety-aware learning framework that employs an adaptivemodel learning method together with barrier certificates for systems withpossibly nonstationary agent dynamics. To extract the dynamic structure ofthe model, we use a sparse optimization technique, and the resulting modelwill be used in combination with control barrier certificates which constrainfeedback controllers only when safety is about to be violated. Under somemild assumptions, solutions to the constrained fee...

Joshi, Prachi

Satellites have revolutionized navigation by making it more universal, accessible and ac- curate. Global Positioning System (GPS) is the most widely used satellite navigation system in the world. However, it is prone to errors from various sources such as the ionosphere, troposphere and clock biases. In order to make the system very accurate and reliable, especially to meet the requirements of safety-critical applications, Satellite Based Augmentation Systems (SBAS) have recently been designed i...