Post-PhD research post on GNSS hybridisation with other sensors at LCPC
(Nantes, France)
1 Introduction
LCPC is looking for a post-PhD trainee who would be interested to work
during a 11 month period, starting between March and June 2005,
in Nantes Centre of LCPC, on research projects about road vehicle
positioning using hybridization between GNSS signals and other sensors.
2 Host laboratory
LCPC is a French State-owned Research Institute under the authority of the
Ministry of Public Works and Transport and the Ministry for Research.
It's status is that of a Public Scientific and Technical Research
Establishment (EPST).
Permanent staff accounts for 550 people, mainly located in two centres:
Paris and Nantes.
LCPC has long-standing recognition in both France and abroad in the area
of civil engineering and is increasing its presence in the areas of
urban engineering, the safety of infrastructures and their operation, the
environment and risk prevention.
LCPC is aiming to meet the expectations of society and support public
policies.
Its Strategic Plan for the period 2000/2004 defined five strategic
orientations:
- Maintain and develop the existing infrastructure heritage
- Ensure road user safety
- Mitigate the environmental impact of infrastructures during their
service life and better control natural hazards
- Optimize civil engineering structures in urban environments
- Promote the introduction of new materials and new technologies in
civil engineering and transport
LCPC has a long R&D experience on advanced GNSS solutions, mainly in the
field of accurate GPS-based operator-aiding systems or automatic
guiding systems for road construction and maintenance equipment.
LCPC owns a unique facility
(http://www.lcpc.fr/en/presentation/moyens/sessyl/index.dml ) devoted to
full-scale and dynamic evaluation of
accurate systems providing position and/or attitude angles, that can be
applied to construction robotics or road safety applications.
LCPC is also leading, with its national or European partners, important
research programs aiming at increasing road user safety, mainly by
improving the control of the interactions between infrastructure, drivers
and vehicles. In this area, LCPC is developing in particular:
- localisation and driving aid demonstrators,
- forecasting devices for winter road operation,
- vision simulation devices for use in poor driving conditions,
- methodologies for assessing and characterizing road equipment.
LCPC also created with INRETS (The French National Institute for Transport
and Safety Research) a joint Research Unit called LIVIC conducting
research on Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) in general.
3 Host team
Team
The core team at LCPC that will host the candidate is composed of 2
researchers, 1 technician and probably 1 doctorate student from September
2005.
Facilities
The team owns a unique facility called SESSYL, devoted to accurate full-
scale evaluation of outdoor positioning systems, as well as a number of
GNSS receivers and various navigation sensors.
The team is located in Nantes Centre of LCPC but belongs to a unit
called “Measurement and Sensing Technologies”, dispatched over Paris and
Nantes.
4 Research projects of LCPC involving data hybridization between GPS
and other sensors
This topic will be developed along 3 axis in the team during the next
years:
1. real-time hybridization with low-cost vehicle sensors for mass-
market road applications,
2. post-processed hybridization with medium-cost sensors for
trajectory determination of fleets of test vehicles,
3. post-processed hybridization with state-of-the-art inertial and
GPS sensors for high accuracy determination of position and attitude of a
vehicle.
The 3 axis are a little more detailed below.
4.1 Real-time hybridization with low-cost vehicle sensors for mass-
market road applications
This research action will be developed in the frame of the contribution to
an FP6 research project, belonging to the 2nd Galileo call for proposals
launched by the GJU in June 2004, called “GNSS introduction in the road
sector”. In this project, dedicated to the development and the promotion
of
different road applications for GNSS systems and supposed to start in 2005
(if it is accepted), LCPC will be in charge of 2 WPs among which one
called : “On-board unit software hybridization with other sensors”.
The team will have to develop the software that will hybridize the outputs
coming from the GNSS unit that will be developed by other partners of the
project and the on-board sensors of the demonstration vehicles. These
sensors will be automotive-cost sensors such as ABS encoders and vibrating
gyrometers.
This work is supposed to be carried out between September 2005 and March
2006, if the project starts effectively on January 2005.
4.2 Post-processed hybridization with medium-cost sensors for
trajectory determination of fleets of test vehicles
This action will be developed in the frame of a LCPC research project
called “Trajectories and Traffic Metrology”, oriented toward the
improvement of road safety. This project is broken-down into 3 sub-
projects : “Conceptual analysis of trajectories”, “Measurement tools for
trajectories” and “Observatories of trajectories”.
The team will be in charge of the second sub-project and will have to
develop several tools that will be needed by the third one for measuring
and
analysing vehicle trajectories of vehicles in order to feed several other
research actions on the role of the infrastructure in the customer’s
safety. Among these tools, several will be based upon on-board GPS-
based “trajectory boxes” that will equip a fleet of test vehicles.
These on-board “boxes” and the dedicated post-processing software will
have to deliver the trajectory of the test vehicles with a global accuracy
of
approximately 0.3 m. The preliminary design has selected inverse DGPS and
data fusion with fibre-optic gyrometer as the main technologies to use.
The research and feasibility studies on this work will be carried out in
2005 and the development will take place in 2006.
4.3 Post-processed hybridization with inertial and GPS sensors for
high accuracy determination of position and attitude of a vehicle
This action will be developed in the frame of another LCPC project,
devoted to longitudinal and transverse skid resistance modelling.
To establish those these models, an accurate determination of position,
speed and attitude angles of the vehicle and ground-speed and drift angle
of wheels is necessary.
To carry out this research, LCPC intends to make use of state-of-the-art
inertial and RTK GPS sensors, combined with other proprioceptive on-board
sensors (displacements, accelerations, rotation angles…).
This topic is more long-term and has been proposed for a pre-PhD trainee
and as a PhD topic. The PhD will start in September 2005, if accepted.
However, since the relationships between this project and the two previous
ones are numerous, it is more than likely that the post-PhD trainee
will be also involved in this project.
5 First draft of the work program of the post-PhD candidate
The research work that is proposed to the candidate will be focused upon
the GNSS hybridization with other sensors.
It will be spread among the 3 different projects presented above, but it
is difficult to be more precise at the moment since some of them are not
yet confirmed and the exact schedules are not fixed, as well as the exact
starting date of the contract.
Roughly, a tentative program could be:
- May 05: starting of the work
- May-July 05: general bibliography on the topic of GNSS
hybridization, contribution to the evaluation of off-the-shelf GPS and
inertial sensors for project n° 3
- August-December 05: contribution to the study and development of
the algorithms for project n° 1 (if Galileo proposal successful) or:
contribution to the study of the post-processing software for project n° 2
(if Galileo proposal not successful)
- January-March 2006 : writing of the final report.
6 Profile of the candidate
The candidate must have completed his PhD and must be less than 35 years
old. His PhD work must be in the domain of GNSS hybridization with other
sensors, or very close. The candidate must have a good background in
signal processing, and in particular, in statistical estimation methods
such as
extended Kalman filtering. He must speak fluently English and, if
possible, French (but not mandatory).
Please contact Dr David BÉTAILLE ([log in to unmask]) for further
details.
David Bétaille
Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussees
route de Bouaye
BP 4129
44341 Bouguenais cedex
Tel : (33) 2.40.84.56.23
Fax : (33) 2.40.84.59.92
E_mail : [log in to unmask]
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