Vehicle Tracking and Dynamics Measurement System for Environmental Impact Monitoring with Real-Time Reporting

To help manage Department of Defense (DoD) administered natural resources, environmental impact models exist that quantify a vehicle's impact on lands based on its dynamics (e.g. speed, turning radius, acceleration). During the Phase I effort, a prototypetracking and monitoring system was developed that utilizes Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements to measure a vehicle's position along with inertial sensors to measure its dynamics. The system logs these measurements for detailed analysis later,and also communicates them to a remote site in real-time using a low-bandwidth satellite link. In addition to measuring vehicle dynamics, the inertial sensors can be used to produce a position estimate even when GPS is unavailable due to occlusions of thesky. During this Phase II effort, we propose to refine the prototype vehicle dynamics measurement system to improve usability, packaging, and lower unit costs. In addition, we will develop software that will provide outputs compatible with commercialgeographic information systems (GIS) and data analysis systems. To evaluate their usability and overall utility, these systems will be evaluated during an actual exercise at a training center during this phase of the program to aid in the development of afinal commercial product.This product has direct application to quantifying environmental impact monitoring by numerous federal agencies including the Department of Defense (DoD), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and the National Forest Service. Inaddition this vehicle position and dynamics monitoring system can be used in mission critical fleet management applications.