Jurgen Sieck

Using the Magnetic Field for Indoor Localisation on a Mobile Phone

Many people have difficulties getting their bearings when entering an unknown building. However, this problem can be solved by localisation and navigation on a mobile phone. This chapter presents a locating system which is based on recognising geomagnetic field disturbances and ambient light. A particle filter is applied to the locating problem. It is used to fuse together the data of both sensors and track the mobile phone. The prototypic implementation of locating takes place on an Android tablet. Different aspects of the particle filter are evaluated regarding their influence on the accuracy of locating. The tests took place in an office building. In the course of these tests an arithmetic mean locating error of 4 m was achieved.

Supervision and Regulation of Home Automation Systems with Smartphones

Home automation and building services systems are integrated in many homes and buildings to meet the needs of comfort, security and efficiency of the customers. On the other hand, mobile devices such as handheld devices and smart phones are providing location-independent access to the Internet and local networks. This paper describes the requirements to combine these two mediums to supervise home automation systems with smart phones. It presents the design and implementation of an iPhone application that allows the retrofitting of mobile devices into an existing KNX home automation system without the need of specific hardware or skilled technicians. An approach to use configuration files, which arise during the installation of KNX home automation systems, for the initial setup of the mobile application is discussed.

Multisensor and Collaborative Localization for Diverse Environments

This paper describes the design and implementation of a multi sensor, collaborative localization system for diverse environments. Many different approaches and systems are utilized depending on the requirements and settings of a particular environment, such as indoor, outdoor or urban environments. Location-based services could benefit from a localization system that is suitable for changing environments. We propose an architecture that facilitates multiple localization systems, such as GPS for outdoor as well as RFID-based and optical systems for indoor purposes. Due to the fact that access to respectively integration of localization systems in mobile handheld devices is limited, we introduce the Location Exchange protocol to share ascertained location information among nearby devices using Bluetooth and Wi-Fi communication. This information can be used to improve the accuracy of obtained positions and enables devices to benefit from localization systems and sensors incorporated by nearby devices.

Adopting the LANDMARC Positioning System for 2.4 GHz Band

The LANDMARC positioning system has gained a lot of interest in the past few years. Many research groups and researchers have developed different enhancements in 308 MHz band but no research has been done so far using LANDMARC in the internationally free to use 2.4 GHz Band. Using open source active RFID technology we describe our approach of adopting the LANDMARC system for 2.4 GHz band and what the main challenges are. As being open source hard- and software, our RFID tags can be flashed with individual firmware. Therefore, we used one that enables our tags not only to identify themselves to the readers, but also between each other -- a feature we additionally used to adopt the LANDMARC system.

Recognition of movable objects

People visiting a foreign city are often not comfortable with the public transport system. This paper describes a system designed help passengers not only to find a suitable route but also to identify the correct bus. Different ways for recognising buses are explained and examined for practicability in the city of Berlin. An actual test case for the best fitting scenario was created and tested in the field.

Wireless Museum Information Systems

This article describes several technical aspects of three different museum information systems developed at the authors university. It examines key features of the systems, shows multiple ways of mobile content access and outlines future research potentials.

Location Based Services and Museum Information Systems

The development of computer technology, mobile devices and sensor technology during the past 30 years has continually affected the creation of new applications based on emergent technologies. By combining the advantages of established technologies with these new approaches and furthermore adapting those criteria to different user needs and application scenarios, including the location of users, we are able to extend existing applications with new mobile components and services. The main focus of this paper is to describe the design of mobile multimedia indoor information systems and context-sensitive services based on a RFID sensor network in museums and passive RFID tags. In order to cover a wide range of applications a standard system architecture was developed.

Multimodal and collaborative localisation service for diverse environments

Context-awareness and particularly location awareness will be vital for mobile applications in the coming years. However, determining the location of a mobile device is a very complex task. Various localization systems have been developed in the past but all have their strengths and weaknesses in certain environments. Compared to specialized devices, such as car navigation systems, smart phones are used in very diverse environments. Therefore this device class should utilize a wide range of localization methods to be able to determine its position in the majority of environments. The aim of this work is to develop an architecture for a smart phone that is able to integrate various types of positioning systems, such as GPS, optical- and radio-based systems, and built-in sensors. A prototypic application that integrates GPS, NFC, and QR codes and a step-detection, based on compass and acceleration sensors, was implemented to show the feasibility of the approach. The developed architecture can easily be extended by further localization systems in a universal manner.

Visualisation on Nonplanar Surfaces Using Projector

This article describes the method of visualisation on nonplanar surfaces using projector. Here we discuss the visualisation using an OpenGL projection model. It is also connected to the problem of camera calibration and direct linear transform as a method of solving this task.

A gesture controlled game for a media facade

This paper describes the prototype of a game, that was developed for a media facade and the techniques used to make it interactive. In particular it is about the possiblity to recognize human poses by using a simple webcam. Furthermore, the paper describes a NFC application, which implements a user registration for the media facade.