Introducing the Freerunner Navigation Board

[Michele Brocco]

On 5/3/10, Helge Hafting <helge.hafting at hist.no> wrote:
> Christoph Mair wrote:
>> Dear community,
>>
>> we are proud to release a hardware extension for our beloved Freerunner: a
>>
>> navigation board!
>>
>> What is it?
>> The Freerunner Navigation Board is a small PCB which is able to measure
>> rotations as well as the magnetic field in 3D respectively (i.e. compass
>> and
>> gyroscopes integrated). The navigation board can be integrated in the
>> existing
>> Freerunner case.
>
> Will the magnetic sensing work with any orientation of the FR?
Yes it is 3D.
>
> One use for this is to help the GPS in difficult places. The FR
> is usually placed with the GPS antenna facing up. When the gps
> signal is good, this can be used to calibrate intertial
> eqipment. (I.e. automatically figure out what orientation the FR has
> with respect to the vehicle, how much the vehicle magnetic field
> distorts the earths field, and how much the local magnetic field
> deviates from true north.)
>
> For cars, one can get USB equipment to read the odometer pulses (and
> lots of other stuff besides that.) A similiar sensor can be
> made for bicycles - having an input for that on the board
> would be very useful. (And given the slow cpu, a pulse counter
> so the software won't have to rely so much on pulse timing.)
>
> This is great for driving in tunnels. There are many mountains
> and tunnels where I live. Having navigation work inside tunnels
> would allow mapping them accurately for openstreetmap. And also have
> underground navigation - some tunnels have got
> intersections/roundabouts inside, with several possible exits.
>
> And then there are cities with too many tall buildings, and things like
> parking houses.
>
In principle that would work. In practice I am afraid that will work
for only short distances due to the noise of the sensors. In my
opinion we should first focus on use cases in which short distance
tracking is required. I think the success rate there may be higher and
we can the build on our findings more complex applications.
Personally, I will focus on that. I would be interested in seeing also
other use cases implemented though.