Positioning in challenging environments
Today we take for granted the ability to know our location, whether using satellite navigation in cars, on our phones, or to track deliveries. This relies primarily on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), with information available when devices are outdoors. Other location methods are available including exploiting mobile phone signals and triangulation.
Indoors, underwater, or where the infrastructure has failed or is lacking, it is much more challenging. This emerging area at York aims to focus on development of systems and techniques that can plug these gaps, from development of underwater or drone-based systems that can be rapidly deployed to augmenting GNSS systems to improve accuracy.
The aim is for these approaches to help underpin research and innovation activity elsewhere within the theme.
Activities
- Overcoming problems associated with an absence of GNSS, either due to its failure or being indoors/underwater. Accurate positioning is vital for comms and sensing and will support several of these themes.
- Positioning using ambient signals and exploitation of non-standard features/sensor technologies, eg star maps
- Positioning underwater within storage ponds at nuclear sites.