Niranjini Rajagopal - Location, location, location! Finding people and things indoors

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Location

Phillips Hall 233

Description

Abstract: Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) tightly integrate computation, communication and networked embedded systems with the goal of monitoring and controlling real-world systems. The proliferation of low-cost processors, emerging communication technologies and increasing capabilities and the lowering form factors of sensors are pushing CPS to impact application domains ranging from health care, transportation, manufacturing, city infrastructure management to disaster response systems. However, the challenge of CPS is in composing the different components together in a manner that guarantees the systems to be high performing, reliable and secure while being cost-effective as well as robust to the unpredictabilities of the real-world. Precise time and location are at the core of many CPS applications, as can be seen by the impact of the Global Positioning System. Indoor localization systems will enable applications ranging from navigation, asset tracking, secure device interaction, mixed reality experiences to emergency support (e911). However, indoor environments are full of barriers, which attenuate and scatter signals that makes it challenging to provide high coverage in a cost-effective and reliable manner at scale. In this talk, I will show steps towards designing scalable indoor localization systems in a systematic manner that perform effectively across unpredictable environments and are compatible with several emerging technologies. First, I will present novel hardware platforms that localize using the lighting infrastructure, speakers as well as emerging RF technologies. Then, I will present tools for deploying and configuring infrastructure in a predictable and cost-effective manner. Finally I will present novel location estimation methods that fuse various sources of information in order to cope with real-world nuisances such as a high amount of reflected signals indoors. I will demonstrate how these techniques apply to CPS applications like mobile augmented reality and first-responder localization. Bio: Niranjini Rajagopal is a PhD candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon University, she worked in industry for three years and received a Bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Trichy, India. During her PhD, she has interned at the Texas Instruments embedded processing systems lab and the wireless location group at Apple. She has been part of the multi-university TerraSwarm and CONIX research centers. Her research is in the area of Cyber Physical Systems at the intersection of embedded sensing systems, statistical signal processing and communications. Her work won IPSN best demo in 2018 and won the International Microsoft Indoor Localization Competition in 2015 and 2018. She received the CMU William S. Dietrich II Presidential PhD Fellowship in 2015 and the Samsung PhD Fellowship in internet of things area in 2016. She was among the MIT EECS Rising Stars in 2018.