RESEARCH

IPNL focuses both on the radio navigation and robotics navigation. We aim to provide innovative navigation solutions through cross-disciplinary collaborations. The applications are UAV, autonomous driving, pedestrian with smartphones.

3D MAPPING AIDED GNSS POSITIONING

The 3D mapping-aided (3DMA) GNSS integrates the information provided by the 3D building model. Once the surrounding building model is presented, the visibility of the satellites can be predicted, which also known as Shadow Matching to match the received satellites with the predicting by 3D building model. The more advanced one is using the 3D model to predict the reflecting path and its delay, which are ray-tracing based GNSS ranging and Skymask 3DMA ranging methods. We developed the Skymask 3DMA ranging to reduce the computation load compares to the ray-tracing based GNSS while maintaining the positioning accuracy. The advantage of 3DMA GNSS is providing positioning accuracy for the low-cost receivers up to about five meters in dense urban areas.

PERCEIVED AIDED SENSORS INTEGRATED NAVIGATION (PASIN) SCHEME

Conventionally, the integrated system fuses the position and orientation solutions from the sensors by Bayesian filter such as extended Kalman filter (EKF). However, this conventional integration scheme neglects a new potential, the LiDAR and cameras can describe the surrounding environment of MMS digitally, which can be used to model the GNSS signal reflection effects, the surrounding dynamic objects. In other words, the error of all the sensors can be mitigated using the perceived information. We called this integration scheme, Perceived Aided Sensors Integrated Navigation (PASIN).

REALIZATION OF LOW-SPEED AUTONOMOUS GROUND VEHICLE

IPNL implements the autoware package to realize a low-speed AGV. The localization, guidance, and control functions are self-developed. This research aims to gain an understanding of the whole AGV system for IPNL members. The wire-controllable vehicle is donated by iDriverpuls which is a successful startup company.

GNSS VECTOR TRACKING IN URBAN CANYONS

The advantages of vector tracking (VT) over the conventional tracking loop (CT) have been extensively exploited through the GNSS software-defined radio (SDR), e.g., the increased capabilities in harsh environments such as low carrier-to-noise ratio, intermittent signal outages, high dynamics, etc. Except for the above-mentioned advantages of VT, other applications and benefits of VT can be explored, e.g., the multipath interference and non-line-of-sight reception (NLOS) detection and correction, the VT-based ultra-tightly coupled GNSS/INS navigation, etc.

MULTI-SENSORS INTEGRATED NAVIGATION SYSTEM FOR AUTONOMOUS DRIVING

Autonomous driving is available in relatively-simple environments such as highway and suburban areas. We aim to develop a GNSS-RTK/LiDAR/INS integrated navigation system for highly urbanized cities such as Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Researcher:

Mr Weisong WEN (PhD Student)

COLLABORATIVE POSITIONING FOR IOT IN SMART CITIES

Due to the forecasting 5G connectivity, all the road agents are expected to connect together. One potential is to making use of the sensors' measurement from the connected road agents to collaboratively positioning. We IPNL aim to develop a collaborative positioning platform and algorithm to integrate the information. We expect the collaborative positioning will play an important role in the futuristic IoT applications.

Researchers:

Mr Guohao ZHANG (PhD Student)

Mr Weisong WEN (PhD Student)

Mr Yang SONG (MSc Student)

POSITIONING INTEGRITY MONITORING FOR AUTONOMOUS DRIVING VEHICLE

The safety of autonomous driving is in prime importance. We aim to compare and combine the safety concepts in both automobile and civil aviation to develop a new integrity monitoring algorithm for the integrated navigation system.