Design Of Navigation System Research Articles

Surgical navigation with a head-mounted tracking system and display.

We present the design of a self-contained head-mounted surgical navigation system, which consists of an optical tracking system and an optical see-through head-mounted display (HMD). While the current prototype is bulky, we envision a more compact solution via the eventual integration of the tracking camera(s) into the HMD goggles. Rather than attempting to accurately overlay preoperative models onto the field of view, we adopted a simpler approach of displaying a small "picture-in-picture" virtual view in the HMD. We believe this approach will provide suitable assistance for some image-guided procedures, such as tumor resection, while improving the ergonomics by reducing the need for the surgeon to look away from the patient to view an external monitor. We report the results of initial experiments performed with this system, while preparing for a more clinically realistic study.

Design of Continuous Indoor Navigation System Based on INS and Wifi

The application of navigation, such as guidance of pedestrians, requires a certain accuracy of continuous outdoor and indoor positioning. In outdoor environments GPS system has proved to be effective. However in indoor it is challenging to control the accuracy within 2 to 3 meters. At present several approaches have been developed for indoor positioning, such as RFID. But they are mainly been implemented in professional areas, for general user such as tourists and visual incapable users it is difficult to take advantage of these technologies because of the high price of terminal and the navigation service covered area is extremely limited. In this paper, a new approach of indoor navigation method is proposed to solve the problems of traditional methods. It is based on INS and wifi positioning technology. As hardware, wifi receiver, smart phone built-in accelerometer and digital compass are selected and investigated. User’s indoor position is first estimated by dead reckoning method with INS navigation system and then be recalibrated by wifi position information. Several experiments performed in the test verified the effectiveness of this indoor continuous positioning method described in this paper.

The Interface Design and Usability Evaluation of Interactive Virtual Reality Navigation System

Virtual reality is an innovative technology, which allows users to immerse in an imagined situation. Therefore, promoting virtual reality technology can provide more natural and specific interaction mode. The purpose of this study is to investigate interactive virtual reality navigation system by testing 15 participants to evaluate the system and analyze the results with Delphi method and Heuristic Evaluation. Besides, we used Questionnaire for User Interaction Satisfaction (QUIS), Usability Metric for User Experience (UMUX) questionnaires and interviews to understand user experience. The results show the new system is better than the old one. The interactive VR navigation system design principles (easy to use, consistency, richness, feedback, simple prompt and documentation) obtained from this study can be used to enhance the satisfaction of the users when designing the interactive VR navigation system in the future.

Design of a Three-Axis Digital Output Gyroscope-Based Intelligent Ultrasonic Diagnostic Navigation System

In this work we reported a design and principle of a three-axis digital output gyroscope-based intelligent ultrasonic diagnostic navigation system. The proposed system provided a real-time intelligent navigation for ultrasound scanning and clinical puncture by transmitting and recording the positional relationship of ultrasound probe and corresponding body structure in real time through network. This system could provide technical support for remote ultrasonic medical consultation.

Autonomous Navigation, Guidance and Control of Small Electric Helicopter

In this study, we design an autonomous navigation, guidance and control system for a small electric helicopter. Only small, light-weight, and inaccurate sensors can be used for the control of small helicopters because of the payload limitation. To overcome the problem of inaccurate sensors, a composite navigation system is designed. The designed navigation system enables us to precisely obtain the position and velocity of the helicopter. A guidance and control system is designed for stabilizing the helicopter at an arbitrary point in three-dimensional space. In particular, a novel and simple guidance system is designed using the combination of optimal control theory and quaternion kinematics. The designs of the study are validated experimentally, and the experimental results verify the efficiency of our navigation, guidance and control system for a small electric helicopter.

Linear covariance techniques for closed-loop guidance navigation and control system design and analysis

While linear covariance analysis is widely used for navigation system design and analysis, it is often overlooked as a tool for closed-loop guidance navigation and control (GN&C) system design and analysis. This article presents an overview of the techniques and methods required to develop a linear covariance analysis tool for a close-loop GN&C system. Then, using a simple nonlinear closed-loop GN&C problem as a guide, the capabilities of linear covariance analysis for the design and analysis of closed-loop systems are demonstrated. It is shown that linear covariance can be accurately applied to a closed-loop system with time-to-go guidance, dead-reckoning navigation, and a Kalman filter for state estimation. The accuracy and efficiency of linear covariance analysis is shown by direct comparison to Monte Carlo analysis results, and the value of linear covariance analysis is highlighted by presenting several analysis capabilities that are often required in the design and analysis of closed-loop GN&C systems. It is also shown how the efficiency of linear covariance enables new design methodologies, one of which is presented in this article, that would otherwise be prohibitive with Monte Carlo analysis.

The Mobile Robot Navigation System Design Based on GPS and GIS

The paper develops an autonomous navigation system with Visual C++ 6.0, combining all-terrain and all-weather mobile robot platform with the high-precision dual-frequency RTK-GPS. The intelligent mobile robot achieves autonomous navigation control. Owing to the four-wheel drive, path tracking is better implemented; Owing to the use of high-precision GPS, position locating is more accurate; Owing to the multithreaded design of the program, real-time requirements of the navigation is better achieved; By the way of map matching of GIS, the path tracking is real-time and the navigation of the robot is more visual and intuitive. The result of experiment shows that this navigation system can meet the requirements of accuracy and real-time and complete the navigation task very well.

Tracking Using an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and GPS

Since the last decade, vehicle tracking has been attracting significant attention in a wide range of applications. To deliver on their requirements, these applications need a specific tracking accuracy. However, current tracking techniques lack the required accuracy, especially for mission critical applications. Although these techniques have demonstrated significant performance improvement, there remain situations that give rise to degraded tracking accuracy, a deficiency that many applications cannot tolerate. This has motivated the research and development of advanced tracking. In this paper will be the design and implementation of an inertial navigation system (INS) using an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and GPS by Matlab simulation software. The INS is capable of providing continuous estimates of a vehicle’s position and orientation. And Comparative study of different types of estimation filters (KF, EKF) which has high accuracy is used to improve system state estimation.

Design and Evaluation of a Micro-Electromechanical Systems Inertial Navigation System for Underwater Vehicle

Design and Evaluation of a Micro-Electromechanical Systems Inertial Navigation System for Underwater Vehicle

Modelling the yaw dynamics of an uninhabited surface vehicle for navigation and control systems design

Marine and Industrial Dynamic Analysis Research Group, Advanced Engineering Systems and Interactions, School of Marine Science and Engineering, Plymouth University, UK In many navigation and control systems a key element in both their software architectures is a model which describes the dynamic characteristics of the given vessel. Thus, to ensure uninhabited surface vehicles are capable of successfully completing missions, it is essential that the marine control systems designer has available bona fide dynamic models that are accurate and possess good prediction capabilities. Since hydrodynamic modelling is usually very expensive, time-consuming and requires the use of specialist equipment in the form of a tank testing facility, it was considered more appropriate to model the vehicle yaw dynamics using Black-box identification techniques. In this paper five new models of the yaw dynamics of the Springer uninhabited surface vehicle are developed and presented. Two of the models that are based on auto-regressive with exogenous variable and autoregressive moving average with exogenous variable techniques are linear in composition and expressed in their state space formats; while the others are nonlinear and described by multi-layer perception, radial basis function and recursive neural networks. In all cases, the models were optimised using a steady-state genetic algorithm. The models are compared using a Mean Square Error criterion and residual correlation analysis. From the evaluation undertaken, it is shown that the yaw dynamic model based on the recursive neural network outperformed the others in terms of predictability and exactness. Therefore, it is concluded the recursive neural network model is the best candidate for navigation and control systems design studies involving the Springer vehicle.

火星探测器转移轨道的自主导航方法

The high precision autonomous navigation is an urgent demand during the cruise phase of Mars probe. The paper outlines and reviews the navigation methods and their accuracies applied in interplanetary cruise phase, and introduces the practical issue that observing multiple navigation sources simultaneously is difficult in actual mission. In order to ensure the navigation accuracy and avoid the simultaneously observing difficulty, an autonomous navigation method based on information fusion by observing asteroid and X-ray pulsar star alternately is presented in this paper. After investigating the force model, the asteroid and X-ray pulsar measurement models and measurement processing, information fusion can be carried out after the asteroid and X-ray pulsar star are observed alternately and are mapped back to the same epoch. An analysis of the available measurement is studied, and the position and velocity of the probe is estimated using the asteroid navigation method, the pulsar navigation method and the asteroid/pulsar method in 2013 Mars Mission scenario. Simulations show the asteroid/pulsar navigation method achieves the best accuracy performance compared with either method alone, which can not only provide precise orbit determination information for trajectory control maneuvers, but also is easy to implement as well. The results demonstrate the method is feasible and effective during cruise phase of Mars probe, and it is particularly useful for autonomous navigation system design in the future deep space exploration.

Different spatial terms in navigation system for Chinese drivers

There has been some research on the comparison of spatial frame of reference system (FoRs) preferences between different areas in China. The goal of this research was to find out whether different habits could affect the performance in driving with the navigation system, with a dual-task experimental paradigm applied. Forty participants from South and North China (10 male and 10 female in each area group) were required to finish spatial term judgment task while playing simulated driving game. The results showed that Southern participants responded more quickly to relative FoRs terms than absolute terms during driving, but there was no significant difference between these two kinds of terms for Northerners--similarly to their habits. All participants' driving actions were disturbed by the spatial term judgment. Unexpectedly, the male participants drove better when responding to relative terms than absolute terms, while female performed conversely. These findings would be useful in navigation systems design for Chinese.

An Enhanced MEMS Error Modeling Approach Based on Nu-Support Vector Regression

Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS)-based inertial sensors have made possible the development of a civilian land vehicle navigation system by offering a low-cost solution. However, the accurate modeling of the MEMS sensor errors is one of the most challenging tasks in the design of low-cost navigation systems. These sensors exhibit significant errors like biases, drift, noises; which are negligible for higher grade units. Different conventional techniques utilizing the Gauss Markov model and neural network method have been previously utilized to model the errors. However, Gauss Markov model works unsatisfactorily in the case of MEMS units due to the presence of high inherent sensor errors. On the other hand, modeling the random drift utilizing Neural Network (NN) is time consuming, thereby affecting its real-time implementation. We overcome these existing drawbacks by developing an enhanced Support Vector Machine (SVM) based error model. Unlike NN, SVMs do not suffer from local minimisation or over-fitting problems and delivers a reliable global solution. Experimental results proved that the proposed SVM approach reduced the noise standard deviation by 10–35% for gyroscopes and 61–76% for accelerometers. Further, positional error drifts under static conditions improved by 41% and 80% in comparison to NN and GM approaches.

The Design and Realization of Auto GPS Navigation System Based on ARM Cortex-M3

Accompanied with the release of ARM Cortex micro controller unit (MCU), the development and application of embedded systems in the field of automobile electronics have upgraded to a higher stage. Based on the market requirement for embedded MCU, the characteristics of Cortex-M3 MCU is analyzed and a design of auto GPS navigation system based on Cortex-M3 is given in this paper. The superior performance and implementation of Cortex-M3-based auto embedded system is analyzed and proved from the perspective of code density and program running time.

Analysis and Optimal Design of Magnetic Navigation System Using Helmholtz and Maxwell Coils

The Helmholtz coils combined with the Maxwell coils can be used to generate the magnetic force for navigating a permanent magnet microrobot in the desired direction. To manipulate the microrobot effectively, two points should be noted: 1) High magnetic field uniformity of Helmholtz coils and magnetic field gradient uniformity of Maxwell coils; 2) High magnetic force with less current which reduces coil-heating and power consumption. Considering the two points, we evaluate and optimize the magnetic propulsion system in this paper. Firstly, two perpendicular Maxwell coils are presented to generate gradient magnetic field with theoretical analysis. The results indicate the two pairs of Maxwell coils system has better electrical properties than one pair. Secondly, we optimize the Helmholtz and Maxwell coils for the uniformities with considering coil thickness. The proposed system for the microrobot has higher navigation accuracy and good electrical properties.

Analysis of Orbital Dynamic Equation in Navigation for a Mars Gravity-Assist Mission

Gravity Assist (GA) is a kind of transfer orbit technology widely used in interplanetary missions, which highly depends on navigation performance to succeed. The Orbital Dynamic Equation is an essential component in the navigation system, affected by factors including the numerical integrator, perturbing planets, integration step size, gravitational constant and planet ephemerides. To analyse the impact factors mentioned above and investigate an efficient system model, the propagation and navigation results are carried out in a Mars-assist explorer scenario; a specific case study is also provided in this paper. The results indicate that the planetary ephemeris uncertainty and integration size are the dominant error sources, and the integration step size is the dominant impact factor on the real-time performance. In this specific case, the ‘Orbital Dynamic Equation’ considering Sun and Mars perturbation is suggested for integration by RK4 with 60 s integration step size. The conclusions drawn by this study are particularly useful in the design, construction, and analysis of an autonomous navigation system for a GA explorer.

High-Precision Navigation Approach of High-Orbit Spacecraft Based on Retransmission Communication Satellites

Many countries have presented new requirements for in-orbit space services. Space autonomous rendezvous and docking technology could speed up the development of in-orbit spacecraft and reduce the threat of increasing amounts of space debris. The purpose of this paper is to provide real-time high-precision navigation data for high-orbit spacecraft, thus reducing the cost of ground monitoring for high-orbit spacecraft autonomous rendezvous operations, and to provide technical support for high-orbit spacecraft in-orbit services. This paper proposes a new high-orbit spacecraft autonomous navigation approach, based on a communication satellite transmitting ground navigation signals. It proposes an overall navigation system design, sets up the system information integration model and analyses the precision of the navigation system by simulation research. Through simulation of this navigation method, the positional precision of a spacecraft at an altitude of 40 000 km, can be within 2·6 m with a velocity precision of 0·0011 m/s. The transponding satellite navigation method greatly reduces the development costs by using communication satellites in high-orbit spacecraft navigation instead of launching special navigation satellites. Moreover, the signals of transponding satellite navigation are generated on the ground, which is very convenient and cost-effective for system maintenance. In addition, placing atomic clocks on the ground may also help improve the clock accuracy achieved. In this study, the satellite-based navigation method is for the first time applied in high-orbit spacecraft navigation. The study's data could improve the present lack of effective high-orbit spacecraft navigation methods and provide strong technical support for autonomous rendezvous and docking of high orbital spacecraft, as well as other application fields.

Are we there yet?

Many studies have identified gender differences in communication related to spatial navigation in real and virtual worlds. Most of this research has focused on single-party communication (monologs), such as the way in which individuals either give or follow route instructions. However, very little work has been reported on spatial navigation dialogs and whether there are gender differences in the way that they are conducted. This article will address the lack of research evidence by exploring the dialogs between partners of the same and of different gender in a simulated Human-Robot Interaction study. In the experiments discussed in this article, pairs of participants communicated remotely; in each pair, one participant (the instructor) was under the impression that s/he was giving route instructions to a robot (the follower), avoiding any perception of gendered communication. To ensure the naturalness of the interaction, the followers were given no guidelines on what to say, however, each had to control a robot based on the user's instructions. While many monologe-based studies suggest male superiority in a multitude of spatial activities and domains, this study of dialogs highlights a more complex pattern of results. As anticipated, gender influences task performance and communication. However, the findings suggest that it is the interaction—the combination of gender and role (i.e., instructor or follower)—that has the most significant impact. In particular, pairs of female users/instructors and male “robots”/followers are associated with the fastest and most accurate completion of the navigation tasks. Moreover, dialoge-based analysis illustrates how pairs of male users/instructors and female “robots”/followers achieved successful communication through “alignment” of spatial descriptions. In particular, males seem to adapt the content of their instructions when interacting with female “robots”/followers and employ more landmark references compared to female users/instructors or when addressing males (in male-male pairings). This study describes the differences in how males and females interact with the system, and proposes that any female “disadvantage” in spatial communication can disappear through interactive mechanisms. Such insights are important for the design of navigation systems that are equally effective for users of either gender.

Dependable Humanoid Navigation System Based on Bipedal Locomotion

In this paper, a dependable humanoid navigation system is proposed by considering many difficulties in humanoid navigation based on bipedal locomotion in an uncertain environment. In particular, we propose a layered architecture to resolve complicated problems through a hierarchical manner. Within the proposed software architecture, a walking path planner, a walking footstep planner, and a walking pattern generator are integrated in a hierarchy to create a reliable motion that overcomes foot slippage and localization sensor noise. Each layer is designed to overcome difficulties originating from bipedal locomotion such as unstable dynamics, inclusion of a sinusoidal noise component in the localization sensor measurement, and disturbance regarding discrete footstepping. The designed navigation system is implemented on a human-sized experimental humanoid platform and is tested for the evaluation of its reliability and robustness in various tasks.

Research and Design of UUV Navigation and Control Integrative Simulation System Based on Component

Research and Design of UUV Navigation and Control Integrative Simulation System Based on Component