Many applications require a high degree of robustness, reliability and availability of the estimated position. EGNOS and Galileo provide key contributions to this. However, they cannot always guarantee the required availability, integrity and continuity, which are required for safety-critical applications e.g. in aviation, rail transport or in the maritime sector. Electromagnetic interference, shadowing and multipath propagation prevent this. For example, the navigation satellite signals are not received in tunnels or deep in the interior of buildings or they are significantly distorted by terrain cuts or in urban environments. Advanced receiver concepts improve the situation considerably, suffice however not always. Other sensors have to be added and integrated. No single sensor alone can provide the necessary characteristics.
People spend their majority of time in buildings or in dense urban environments. Like in road-based transport and logistics, where positioning by means of GPS can not be ignored today, it can be assumed that highly accurate and reliable positioning of people and machines can open up a new world of applications. To emphasize is the application in the 'Ambient Assisted Living' where knowledge of the exact location of a person can be crucial for its welfare and safety. In addition to mass market applications, there are also professional users who can benefit from ubiquitous, reliable navigation: emergency services, security services, medical personnel, to name only a few groups whose work can be made safer and more effective through positioning and networking. Particularly exciting and challenging is the positioning of autonomous machines, for example, cleaning - and maintenance robots, autonomous transport vehicles, or terrestrial and extraterrestrial exploration robots.
The project 'Dependable Navigation' has the goal to create the bases for the further development of planned navigation systems, to fulfil the high demands on robustness, reliability and availability of the applications named above.
For this two components are necessary:
Both areas are closely coupled through numerous interactions and the question of the task division between system and user. The increase of the robustness and reliability requires the addressing of both components whereas the increase of the availability can be acheived primarily through adaptations in the user segment for example through inclusion of further sensors.
For many applications in indoor areas or other difficult environments for the reception of satellite navigation signals novel multi-sensor navigation algorithms are necessary, which shall be implemented with the 'end-to-end Bayesian' approach. In order to serve these applications, also the use of knowledge about the environment ('maps') is required. These maps can be created in a realistic way by means of the 'Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping' (SLAM) principle. The map information enables the positioning of all users in the particular environment and must be adjusted during operation and kept up to date. Only with SLAM, for example, it is possible that robots compute and find their own way, because they have sufficient knowledge about obstacles in their environment and the physical space becomes a meaning only by the maps.
The project is therefore divided into the following four sub-projects:
In each of the four sub-projects experimental platforms are set up to demonstrate the functionality and performance of the developed methods and techniques. The project Dependable Navigation follows directly its predecessor project GalileoADAP, which was completed in July 2011.
Funded by: internal
Project duration: 2011-2016