MIT's New Wearable Device Creates Digital Maps As You Walk Inside Buildings

An automatic building mapping system, as MIT calls it, is a sensor-based device that you can wear on your chest and walk around while it creates a digital map of your surroundings in real time. So, automating the process of what a spy does in any film is what is accomplished by this system. Normally, a spy would go and check the building before the mission and give textual information such as, "I went into this room on the left, I saw this, I went into the next room." or may be take some pictures. But with this system, as the wearer walks around the rooms of a building, the sensors wirelessly relay the data to a laptop in a distant conference room. Observers in the conference room were able to track the student’s progress on a map that sprang into being as he moved.
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The entire system consists of a laser rangefinder for sweeping an arc of 270 degrees, a cluster of accelerometers and gyroscopes, a camera, and, in one group of experiments, a barometer (changes in air pressure proved to be a surprisingly good indicator of floor transitions). What's interesting to note is that if the person wearing the sensors returns to an area that he or she has previously visited, the system’s location estimate could be off. For instance, on a second visit a wall now looks several feet farther away than it did. In such cases, a fresh snapshot and a comparison of the visual features with those already stored can help correct its location estimate.




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