NOMAD Positioning System - 3rd place @ CSIDC 2005

Project name: NOMAD Positioning System
Contest: CSIDC 2005
Award: 3rd
Team: Doru Arfire, Catalin Ioana, Bogdan Lucaciu, Marius Muresan
Mentor: Nicolae Tapus, Vlad Panait

(raport)

In the news:

9am

Curierul National

Abstract:

In the past few years we have entrusted our orientation needs to the Global Positioning System. Although the GPS is an effective method to determine a person's location, it has its limitations – it only works in open environments and it has limited accuracy.

The NOMAD positioning system was designed and developed to go beyond the boundaries imposed by conventional positioning systems, providing navigation and orientation facilities when and where they are needed. It is inexpensive, completely mobile, it doesn't depend on any external systems like satellites, and it works in almost any environment, including underground locations, large buildings or busy cities with skyscrapers.

NOMAD is an user-centric system that was designed to provide position information by tracking, recording and analyzing the human movement. This is accomplished by the use of a Motion Tracking Unit (MTU) - a small device carried by the user that collects data from high-accuracy sensors (digital accelerometers, compass and accelerometer), processes the information and sends it over a wireless connection to the NOMAD Guide software that runs on a mobile platform.

The NOMAD Guide computes the traveled path in real-time and instantly reports visual mapping information to the user. It can be used for creating dynamic maps of unknown locations, based solely on the paths traveled by the user, or for guided navigation on existing maps.

Mine engineers, military, speleologists are often doing their jobs in the underground, and are subjected to all the specific perils of such activities. Tourists often venture in caves or other underground locations without proper maps, equipment or experience. Almost all large cities have vast underground sewage systems, where technicians perform daily maintenance activities on the various systems running in the underground. Even with a map, these are confusing whereabouts where conventional positioning systems do not work.

NOMAD gives an enriched orientation experience, being not only a navigation guide for the users, but also a mean to include additional information to the map for future analysis. Users can create multimedia maps by adding images, voice or text notes to key points on the location, turning their experience into an expedition journal. Although the NOMAD system is designed to be completely mobile and independent to other systems, it can also be used in a distributed network, where collaborative users cover distinct areas of an underground system. The NOMAD Guide Software allows users exploring the same territory to periodically synchronize their NOMAD maps, sharing the team experience and observations.

Another aspect of the NOMAD System are the on-line communities, meeting grounds for possible underground explorers. This feature is accomplished by the Online Repository, a web-based application that allows users to publish, download and review maps directly from the NOMAD Guide, or from a normal web browser on their desktop computer.