PNAV: Human Motion Labeling and Quantification for Personal Navigation

Recent developments in Blue Force Tracking have created new possibilities in Command and Control. The ability to track friendly forces down to the level of individual soldiers feeds into the goal of comprehensive situational awareness for all warfighters across the US Army, Marines, and Special Forces, thus contributing to the prevention of casualties and collateral damage. However, in a complex urban battlespace, where GPS may be denied or inaccurate due to multipath, heavy foliage, or obscuring structures, advanced methods are required to localize and continuously track soldiers. Current Dead Reckoning Filters for GPS-denied navigation assume all steps are forward steps and therefore perform poorly. Scientific Systems Company Inc. (SSCI) through its Phase I research has developed novel signal processing and labeling algorithms to robustly discriminate between different types of human motion, based on data collected from an inertial sensor. Our results indicate that labeling a persons motion type in conjunction with a step quantification model is a very promising approach to improving the navigation accuracy of the future planned Nett Warrior Navigation system when GPS is denied or degraded. SSCI is collaborating with Draper Laboratory and Honeywell Aerospace in Phase II to develop a navigation enhancement for Nett Warrior.