Prototyping and Testing of Universal Plug and Play Navigation

In Phase I, our research team set forth an innovative design of and enabling techniques for universal plug and play navigation (UPNAV) that reconfigures itself on-the-fly as aiding sensors are connected to and disconnected from the system without the need for system redesign and software recompiling. In Phase II, we propose to develop and prototype the UPNAV technology with field tests and demos. The key components of the proposed solution include (i) a synchronized timing and asynchronous measurement packer (STAMP), (ii) unified aiding information drives (UAID), and (iii) a reconfigurable integration filtering engine (RIFE). A variety of sensors are encapsulated into classes in the RIFE library, each representing a generic type of sensors (rather than a specific one) defined by the type of measurements they offer for navigation purpose. The plug and play functionality is realized by identifying a new sensor"s measurement type, instantiating a sensor object from its class, and then retransforming the filter. Additional quality control and adaptation measures are applied to ensure transient performance. In Phase II, an operational prototype with a selection of sensors will be built with data collection capability for algorithms tuning, performance evaluation, and finally field demo. This will also provide the basis for commercial products with embedded implementations in low-cost mass production to pursue beyond Phase II.