Towards LuxTrace: Using Solar Cells to Measure Distance Indoors

J. Randall, O. Amft, G. Tröster, “Towards LuxTrace : using solar cells to measure distance indoors“, LoCA 2005, T Strang & C. Linnhoff-Popien editors, p.40-51.

A paper on a location system that is based on solar modules for navigation and tracking of humans within a building. The concept, LuxTrace, relies on existing infrastructure and proves to be low cost, low weight, low volume and manufactured to have similar characteristics to everyday clothing. The solar modules are used only to track the intensity of indoor lights as a form of context information.

The authors provide an interesting theoretical framework with 2 papers that were not my radar yet:

On Markov localization:
Fox, D.: Markov Localization: A Probabilistic Framework for Mobile Robot Localization and Navigation. PhD thesis, Institute of Computer Science TU Dreseden Germany (1998)

and some early Hightower work providing a taxonomy of location systems:
Hightower, J., Borriello, G.: A survey and taxonomy of location systems for ubiquitous computing. IEEE Computer, 34(8) (2001) 57–66

Relation to my thesis: One type of alternative location technique (as opposed to the mainstream GPS, RF-based) that could very much fit to very specific environments and scenarios. A must be aware on the way the compute their average distance estimation error (less than 18cm with a confidence of 83%)