ETH - Indoor Positioning & Indoor Navigation


13:15 - 13:45	Dominik Aufderheide (presenting author, at LIPS), Werner Krybus: Towards Real-Time Camera Egomotion Estimation and Tal Scene Acquisition from Monocular Image Streamshree-Dimension The estimation of a camera’s egomotion is a highly desirable goal in many different application fields such as Augmented Reality (AR), visual navigation, robotics or entertainment. Especially for real-time modelling the former estimation of the camera trajectory is an elementary step towards the generation of three dimensional scene models. Based on ideas recently introduced in the field of Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) and classical Structure from Motion algorithms (SfM), which were derived from basic principles of photogrammetry, this paper presents a framework for simultaneous recovery of scene structure and camera motion by combining visual and inertial cues (Inertial Aided SfM). For this purpose two different system designs are proposed: a loosely-coupled system, which follows a classical approach for solving the five-point relative orientation problem for estimating the camera trajectory, and a monolithic design, which adapts ideas from non-linear state estimation as Extended Kalman Filtering (EKF) for structure and motion recovery.

13:45 - 14:15	Armin Hornung (presenting author), Maren Bennewitz, Wolfram Burgard: Learning Efficient Vision-based Navigation Cameras are popular sensors for robot navigation tasks as they are inexpensive, lightweight, and provide rich data. However, fast movements of a mobile robot typically increase motion noise and reduce the performance of vision-based navigation due to motion blur. In this work, we present a reinforcement learning approach to choose appropriate actions for vision-based navigation. The learned policy chooses actions so as to minimize the time to reach the navigation goal and implicitly mitigates the impact of motion blur on observations. Our system integrates odometry and visual features in an unscented Kalman filter for localization. Extensive simulated and real-world experiments with wheeled and legged robots demonstrate that our learned policy significantly outperforms policies using hand-optimized navigation strategies.

14:15 - 14:45	Beat Buerki (presenting author), Sébastien Guillaume, Paul Sorber, Hanspeter Oesch: DAEDALUS: A versatile usable digital clip-on measuring system for total stations DAEDALUS designates an automated on-line measuring system which was designed and developed at the Geodesy and Geodynamics Lab (GGL) at ETH Zurich primarily for automated on-line astro-geodetic measurements. It consists of a small CCD camera which can easily be clipped on a total station instead of the ordinary eye-piece, a pluggable front lens, a low-cost GNSS receiver, and dedicated software for steering, imaging and on-line processing. The system enables new possibilities for fully automated high-precision digital angle measurements, unaffected by human interference, both in outdoor as well as in indoor applications. Furthermore the software is capable to perform image template matching thus allowing optical target recognition by using various image processing algorithms. Although DAEDALUS was initially designed for astro-geodetic use, the results obtained revealed new and unexpected possibilities in other disciplines such as automated terrestrial and engineering surveying, deformation, vibration, and frequency analysis and photographic documentation. For applications where event timing allocation is needed, high-precision time-tagged measurements are possible by means of a GNSS receiver, equipped with an external antenna for indoor applications. Beside some aspects of astro-geodetic measurements the paper describes selected applications using TCA 1800 total stations from Leica Geosystems to demonstrate new and still unexploited possibilities of this new technique.

14:45 - 15:00	Manfred Klopschitz (presenting author), Gerhard Schall, Dieter Schmalstieg, Gerhard Reitmayr: Visual Tracking for Augmented Reality Localization of mobile devices is an essential task in Augmented Reality and has therefore been an active research topic for many years. Typically, indoor tracking approaches, such as methods based on infrared or ultra-wide-band, require preparations of the environment and special hardware sensors. Conversely, image feature tracking approaches can provide orientation estimates without special tracking hardware installations. With the advent of mobile devices equipped with sensors such as digital cameras, image based localization gains importance in Augmented Reality. Typically, fiducial marker tracking was considered as a standard image based localization method. We propose the use of natural image feature based tracking methods, which are a generalization of the same principals but do not require the presence of fiducial tracking targets.

Optical Systems, Part 2

Session Chair: Dr. Henri Eisenbeiss, ETH Zürich

15:30 - 15:50	Tobias K. Kohoutek (presenting author), Rainer Mautz, Andreas Donaubauer: Range Imaging Sensors and their Opportunity for Real-time Indoor Positioning We present a novel indoor positioning method based on the acquisition and interpretation of range images from a time-of-flight based range imaging sensor. The local 3D Cartesian coordinates of the scene are computed automatically. The actual coordinate accuracy is driven by the distance measurement accuracy which is in the order of centimetres for range imaging sensors such as MESA’s SR4000 or PMDTech’s CamCube. The detected 3D point cloud or alternatively the automatically extracted edges and corners will be matched with a CityGML, which is a fine GIS model that can include walls, doors and built-in furniture of indoor environments with a global geodetic datum. From the 3D point cloud the position of the range imaging sensor itself can easily be determined by resection. In contrast to common indoor positioning approaches, the procedure presented here does not require local physical reference infrastructure, such as WLAN hot spots or reference markers.

15:50 - 16:10	Frank Boochs, Rainer Schütze (presenting author at University of Applied Sciences Mainz), Camille Simon, Holger Wirth, Jürgen Meier: Increasing the accuracy of untaught robot positions by means of a multi-camera system This paper shows the potential to improve the absolute positional accuracy of a robot carrying an effector for manipulation or inspection purposes based on digital photogrammetric strategies. First the need and aims of such a tracking process in the context of an untaught use of robots are explained and compared to the restrictions to be accepted when actual solutions have to be used. Then the general potential of digital photogrammetric solutions will be shown together with an outline of a conception being adapted to the needs to solve the problem. As the system has been realized as prototype it was possible to define test situations for the internal and external accuracy. The results of these practical tests will be shown, underlining that the design and realization are able to hold the challenging aims and improve the absolute accuracy of a robot by a factor of 20.

16:10 - 16:30	Sebastian Tilch (presenting author), Rainer Mautz: CLIPS - A Novel Optical Indoor Positioning System This paper presents the current research activities in indoor positioning at the Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry at the ETH Zurich with focus on our novel optical indoor positioning system CLIPS. Although there is a great variety of indoor positioning systems exploiting the processing of i.e. UWB or WLAN signals, the application of inertial measurement units or the use of optical methods, we decided to create a novel optical indoor positioning system. This is based on the fact that not any indoor positioning system is currently able to satisfy all user requirements like inexpensiveness, mobility and high accuracy without any sophisticated system setup. The goal of CLIPS is to combine these desired points in just one system by determining the relative orientation of a digital camera with respect to an inverse camera which is a laser emitting light source, allowing the projection of a flexible reference field and the simulation of a second camera.

16:30 - 16:45	Verena Willert: Optical Indoor Positioning using a camera phone This abstract describes a system for the determination of the user’s position inside a building by using a camera phone. For calculating the position only one image of an object that is known in a local building reference system is required. The spatial resection is used as the algorithm for the position estimation. Digital cameras are nowadays included in almost every mobile phone. Therefore, the aim is to develop a system that allows indoor positioning using a camera phone. In the following, the technical realization of the system is described and first results of positioning with a camera phone using spatial resection are presented.

Wichtiger Hinweis:
Diese Website wird in älteren Versionen von Netscape ohne graphische Elemente dargestellt. Die Funktionalität der Website ist aber trotzdem gewährleistet. Wenn Sie diese Website regelmässig benutzen, empfehlen wir Ihnen, auf Ihrem Computer einen aktuellen Browser zu installieren. Weitere Informationen finden Sie auf
folgender Seite.

Important Note:
The content in this site is accessible to any browser or Internet device, however, some graphics will display correctly only in the newer versions of Netscape. To get the most out of our site we suggest you upgrade to a newer browser.
More information