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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Crowdsourcing Based Micro Navigation System For Visually Impaired, Quan Shi Oct 2018

Crowdsourcing Based Micro Navigation System For Visually Impaired, Quan Shi

Masters Theses

Mobility and safety are primary concerns for blind and visually impaired (BVI) users when navigating in unfamiliar environments. Typically, a sighted person can locate a place of interest if they are provided guidance while approaching within a few meters of the location. However, this resolution of guidance is often insufficient for blind travelers. In this thesis, we propose a crowdsourcing based micro navigation system for BVI users in both indoor and outdoor environments. To achieve this goal, our system includes three parts: crowdsourcing reports generated by volunteers using the volunteer application, landmarks validation performed by the system administrator using the …


Improvements For Vision-Based Navigation Of Small, Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Robert C. Leishman, Jeremy Gray, John F. Raquet, Adam Rutkowski Jul 2018

Improvements For Vision-Based Navigation Of Small, Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Robert C. Leishman, Jeremy Gray, John F. Raquet, Adam Rutkowski

Faculty Publications

Investigating alternative navigation approaches for use when GPS signals are unavailable is an active area of research across the globe. In this paper we focus on the navigation of small, fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that employ vision-based approaches combined with other measurements as a replacement for GPS. We demonstrate with flight test data that vehicle attitude information, derived from cheap, MEMS-based IMUs is sufficient to improve two different types of vision processing algorithms. Secondly, we show analytically and with flight test data that range measurements to one other vehicle with global pose is sufficient to constrain the global drift …


Navigation Using Vector And Tensor Measurements Of The Earth's Magnetic Anomaly Field, Lauren A. Mount Mar 2018

Navigation Using Vector And Tensor Measurements Of The Earth's Magnetic Anomaly Field, Lauren A. Mount

Theses and Dissertations

This research explores the viability of using a navigation system that relies on measurements of the magnetic anomaly field as an alternative to GPS navigation. Previous research has been conducted on developing a navigation system using the intensity of the Earth's magnetic anomaly field as an alternative signal. This research focuses on using vector and tensor measurements, as opposed to scalar measurements of the anomaly field, as a means of obtaining accurate position and orientation solutions. This paper presents two navigation systems. The first uses an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) with vector measurements of the magnetic anomaly field to aid …


Navigational Heads-Up Display, Alex Walenchok, Nicholas Seifert, Joshua Reed, Joshua Humphrey Jan 2018

Navigational Heads-Up Display, Alex Walenchok, Nicholas Seifert, Joshua Reed, Joshua Humphrey

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

One problem drivers face is distraction from looking at their mobile device while navigating rather than watching the road. This problem can be solved with a heads-up display placed directly on the driver’s windshield. By using a mobile device with a custom GPS application, the following design will be able to send GPS data to a device that will display navigational information on a car windshield. The design includes two primary components, a mobile device and a System Unit, where the System Unit is composed of a portable power supply, a single board computer, and a display. For the design, …