Localization and 3D Reconstruction of Urban Scenes Using GPS

Paper appeared in IEEE ISWC 2008 Pittsburgh, PA

We introduce a novel approach that makes use of discarded signals from GPS. Commonly, signals having lower SNR(Signal to Noise Ratio) is not used to calculate the position and is discarded.
But, we observed that those low signals are mostly from the occlusion and the surface scattering of buildings surrounding the receiver.
Therefore, our work started from the question : "If we use those information, can we generate rough localization of building or its shape in 3D?"

Result was not accurate as good as using vision based approach or using laser scanner. But ,at least, we showcased that "discarded signals" can be used for out-lining the structure around you.

The video shows some result of our work.

More details appeared in the paper.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• 3D Reconstruction
• Localization
• GPS
• Urban scene

[roidroid]

GPS works by your GPS device "listens" to the signals from multiple GPS satelites (in fixed positions in space).

If you walk behind a building, the building will "shadow" you from a Satelite - garbling the signal.

If you take special note of where and when these "shadow" events occured, compared to where we know the satelites are - you can interpolate the size and location of the building that is causing the shadow.

That's brilliant! Good work.