Nexus - An Open Global Infrastructure for Spatial-Aware Applications

Summary

Development of concepts and techniques for a system-level support of location-aware applications with mobile users.

The goal of this research group is the examination of concepts and methods for the support of location-aware application with mobile users. It will lead to the development of a global platform for spatial-aware applications, whose main purpose is to maintain a distributed, dynamic model of the real world augmented by virtual objects. Virtual objects are associated with a geographical position or a certain real world object in this model and contain links to existing information spaces like the WWW. For a convenient access to this platform a basic communication service with a high availability is required, which integrates different mobile communication systems, provides a management of the quality of service and has the ability of geograpic addressing. The support of disconnected operations permits an interaction with the platform even in areas with low or temporarily unavailable network connection. By integrating different sensor technologies (e.g. GPS and inertial systems) in combination with image analysis, the platform will be able to gather as much information about the position and environment of its users as possible. The efficient management of this location information requires a distributed global location service. Based on the experiences with Geographical Information Systems (GIS) will be the representation of real and virtual objects in the model as well as the automic creation of model data, which shall be available in different levels of detail. For an efficient access to the model and the various information spaces attached to it, suitable techniques for the storage the model and the optimized execution of spatial database queries will have to be developed. An important aspect is the creation of new federation techniques, as the special information databases developed here will have to be integrated with existing information sources.

Staff of the NEXUS project at the ifp

• Darko Klinec
• Steffen Volz

Tasks of the NEXUS project at the ifp

• Pedestrial Navigation for the NEXUS-platform
• Integration of GIS components into the Nexus platform

Financed by:

DFG (german research foundation)

offical homepage of the NEXUS project