FIG Commission 5 - Positioning and Measurement

Working Group 5.5
Multi-Sensor-Systems  

Policy Issues

This group is a joint working group between FIG and IAG. It focuses on the development of shared resources that extend our understanding of the theory, tools and technologies applicable to the development of multi sensor systems. It has a major focus on:

• Performance characterization of positioning sensors and technologies that can play a role in augmenting core GNSS capabilities
• Theoretical and practical evaluation of current algorithms for measurement integration within multi sensor systems.
• The development of new measurement integration algorithms based around innovative modeling techniques in other research domains such as machine learning and genetic algorithms, spatial cognition etc.
• Establishing links between the outcomes of this WG and other IAG and FIG WGs (across the whole period)
• Generating formal parameters that describe the performance of current and emerging positioning technologies that can inform FIG and IAG members.

Chair

Allison Kealy, Australia
allison.kealy[at]rmit.edu.au

Guenther Retscher, Austria
Guenther.Retscher[at]geo.tuwien.ac.at

Special projects

• International field experiments and workshops on a range of multi sensor systems and technologies.
• Evaluation of UAV capabilities and the increasing role of multi-sensor systems in UAV navigation.
• Investigate the role of vision based measurements in improving the navigation performance of multi sensor systems.
• Development of shared resources to encourage rapid research and advancements internationally.

What we are working on - A number of papers will be submitted to relevant conferences and technical journals. A special journal edition of papers from the Mobile Mapping Symposium in 2015 will be supported.

What's New

In 2019, WG efforts focused on processing techniques in three primary areas – firstly, more representative statistical error distributions for the non traditional sensors such as wifi and ultra wideband based on real-world data; secondly, the implementation of novel techniques such as differential wifi and information grammar as approaches to improving the positioning solution achievable from traditional sensor fusion techniques and thirdly, robust, decentralised fusion algorithms for scalable and practical collaborative networks. Contributions to each of these three areas were made by RMIT University, Australia, the University of Melbourne, Australia, the Ohio State University, USA, TU Wien, Austria, Athens Technical University, University of Padova, Padova, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India. The full details around these approaches, the research hypotheses, datasets used, experimental setups and results are detailed in publications from the collaborating researchers.

This WG undertook a follow up to the outreach program in Sri Lanka in 2018. Working collaboratively with the Sabaragamuwa University (Geomatics Department), a workshop was conducted specifically with a knowledge transfer focus. A key aspect of this workshop was a data collection campaign to evaluate the performance of GAGAN the Indian contribution to GNSS. We expect to continue to deepen this relationship in the future. Members of this WG are also very active in promoting the women in positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) activities underway in other professional associations such as the ION and RIN.