AL-04

(Oral presentation, session Areas and Living, 14.50 - 15.10 hrs)

“When firefighters can work safer, they can also save more lives"

The AIOSAT project aims to improve fire-fighters safety by tracking their locations in challenging situations. Information about the location allows for better situational awareness during a calamity.

The research in this European H2020 project builds on the knowledge and experience that the Ambient Intelligence group has developed during several previous projects on localization of first-responders (SIA FireBee, TFF Mobile Sensing for Safety and Raak-mkb SaxShoe).

The current project combines sensor readings from several sensors: Galileo GNSS, Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) and Ultra-wideband (UWB) range measurements.

Galileo GNSS is similar to GPS and gives good position estimations. However, this technique does not work in situations where the radio signals from the satellites are blocked or reflected, such as indoors, close to high buildings, or in situations with dense forest or heavy smoke.

IMUs can operate in situations where the GNSS does not work. The sensors measure the acceleration and rotation and estimate the position based on this information. However, this approach results in systems that have a non-bounded growing error in the position estimation over time. Accordingly, this technique works for a short period of time.

Ultra-wide band (UWB) is a radio technology that allows to perform an accurate range estimation between two portable radios.

Saxion combines all these information sources into one location estimation. We answer the question: given all the measurements up to now, what is the most probable position of this person? This process is called sensor fusion and Ambient Intelligence designs and builds these algorithms. During the presentation we give a graphical and intuitive visualization of the fusion principle.