Back
to indexAndy Harter and Andy Hopper and Pete Steggles and Andy Ward and Paul Webster
Summary
This article descibes an indoor localization system for telemetry of humans traversing through the sensory environment. This system allows the user's interfaces and applications to follow them as they move. Small units called "bats" are attached to equipment carried by personnel, consisting of a radio transceiver and an ultrasonic transducer. Known ultrasound receiver units are placed around the environment, allowing the bats to localize their position. The model was shown to scale to larger building sizes.
Methods
The bats have associated Location Quality of Service metrics, specifying the desired interval between location updates for the object. The world model consists of persistant objects within the world, which are distinct CORBA objects on top of an Oracle database. CORBA allows objects to re-bind to modules when they move between sections of the environment. Resource monitors are installed to watch ober machine activity, resources, and network P2P bandwidth and latency, to control the LQoS. Together, these components create a location-aware API based on the positions of the bats and the receiver units.
Indexing the positions of objects is accomplished by a "containment indexing theorem". The boundaries of each space are defined and space is added by tree walking. This spatial monitoring system allows event-based applications to be written, providing the user with the context and personal preferences of a seemless computing infrastructure. Bats teleport between systems with a Virtual Network Computing system, so the user's environment can follow him as he moves betweeen computers.
Keywords
CORBA, spatial monitoring, localization, telemetry
Rating
2 - good article, not relevant
Bibtex Entry
@inproceedings{ harter99anatomy,
author = "Andy Harter and Andy Hopper and Pete Steggles and Andy Ward and Paul Webster",
title = "The Anatomy of a Context-Aware Application",
booktitle = "Mobile Computing and Networking",
pages = "59-68",
year = "1999",
url = "citeseer.nj.nec.com/harter02anatomy.html"
}