Final Report Summary - LYNCEUS (People Localization for save ship evacuation during emergency)
Executive Summary:
The LYNCEUS project investigated and demonstrated ultra-low power wireless body area network technologies for enabling unobtrusive localisation and tracking of people for onboard and overboard search and rescue as well as for safe evacuation of ships during emergency. The technology developed during the project timeframe revolutionises current emergency management and ship evacuation practice through the development of beyond the state-of-the-art real-time emergency management and safe evacuation systems, which will significantly contribute towards early localisation and rescue of people in danger located onboard a ship or in the sea.
Through its consortium, the LYNCEUS novel technology was transferred into the SME-driven market segments of smoke alarm/fire detection systems, lifesaving equipment, emergency management decision support systems and assistive search and rescue equipment, aiming at the generation of a high societal and market impact for the European SMEs in the near future.
The primary safe evacuation and search and rescue application areas where the LYNCEUS technology pushes the technology beyond the state-of-the-art and significantly contributes towards minimizing the risk of loss of life are summarized below:
* People localisation in ship: Even though there are various systems for wireless sensor localization, it is the first time that such a system exists for the extremely demanding environment of a ship. LYNCEUS provides a breakthrough for the current ‘manual’ approach since it gives search and rescue teams a novel tool for localising people and ensuring that they have been safely evacuated.
* Passenger status monitoring: LYNCEUS revolutionizes the current safe evacuation decision making approaches since it enables for the first time real time monitoring of basic behavioural information of passengers. Knowing whether passengers and crew are actively taking part in the evacuation process will significantly contribute towards efficient rescue prioritisation and optimisation of safety crew resource allocation.
* Emergency progress/escalation: The project significantly adds to the current systems’ capabilities by offering a wireless network where ad-hoc sensor nodes could be easily deployed to monitor a vast range of parameters that describe the current situation of the emergency in a dynamic changing environment.
* Passenger counting and identification: The LYNCEUS technology introduces an automatic approach for passenger identification and counting at muster stations and life rafts, minimising errors that may occur through the current verbal identification process. LYNCEUS can provide each individual’s identity by associating his lifejacket with information from the ship’s manifest using a user friendly and reliable handheld device, thus ensuring an accurate, reliable and time efficient counting and identification system.
* Safe evacuation and emergency management decision support: LYNCEUS provides the safe evacuation and emergency management decision making process with a vast amount of information about passenger’s position and behaviour in real time. This unique information feeds advanced decision support algorithms which provide efficient decision making support based on real time data.
* People localisation in sea: The use of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV) together with an innovative active radio beacon technology will revolutionise the current search and rescue processes/techniques since a person overboard will be able to transmit its position through the LYNCEUS technology embedded in his life jacket.
In summary, LYNCEUS has created a family of technologies which will push current practices from ship localisation to individual people overboard localisation and identification.
Project Context and Objectives:
A large number of studies and investigations have been carried out the last few years following casualties involving ships. These studies identified the need to improve the evacuation, mustering and abandoning procedures, especially on passenger ships, as these are getting larger and larger; with some cruise ships reaching the capacity of more than 8000 people onboard. An essential stage in the above procedures is the counting and accounting for all persons onboard a passenger ship and controlling their movement for safe abandoning. The importance of this stage has been further highlighted in the relevant sections of the STCW Convention and Code of 1995 as amended; for passenger ships; namely the requirements of section V/2 & V/3 of the STCW Code for Ro- Ro and passenger ships respectively.
The reports from the investigation of various serious incidents or casualties on passenger ships which resulted loss of life revealed and highlighted the urgent need for improvements in the evacuation, mustering and abandoning procedures and especially on tracking and locating the whereabouts of each person onboard, at first, and secondly on the proper and correct counting of people. The last two are considered as the weak link in the whole process of ensuring the safe evacuation of all persons onboard. Despite the huge investment in maritime technology today, there is a significant drawback in all onboard systems used for the safe evacuation of people in the sense that there is not at present any technology which will enable real-time localisation, tracking and behavioural monitoring of all people onboard the ship during a real emergency evacuation. This inefficiency puts a great strain on the Master, Officers and crew when faced with a real emergency since the unknown location of the passengers onboard on real time may result in a sub-optimum response. The investigation of many of these incidents involving loss of life has identified two major areas where the search and rescue capabilities of both the ship and shore facilities could have been improved with the application of new innovative technologies:
A: Onboard passenger and crew localisation/tracking during a real emergency evacuation from a ship
The lack of technology that allows the ship’s command to locate and track passengers in real time in case of an emergency and also provide this information to a centralized control system for an efficient assessment of the emergency is a significant barrier in the development of a reliable and efficient Decision Support System that would minimize the risk of incomplete evacuation of a ship.
B: Passenger and crew localisation after abandoning the ship, for search and rescue
Even though current systems deployed in all ships include technologies that help locate ships in emergencies, the problem of localising individual passengers which have gone overboard and may float in the sea away from the vicinity of the emergency due to extreme weather or ocean currents, remains a major issue in search and rescue operations. As a result, the industry still counts loss of passengers at sea.
Tackling of the aforementioned problems remained previously unsolved mainly due to major technological barriers for low cost and safe evacuation that where overpassed with the LYNCEUS technologies. These included the following:
1) Unavailability of extremely low powered, low cost wireless technology which could be embedded in wearable items such as life jackets, or bracelets, and enable real time localization/tracking of the person wearing them. Techniques based on RFID tags [1] are limited to counting of passengers while limited transmission range requires a large number of RFID readers, thus escalating the cost.
2) Unavailability of technology to monitor passenger behavior and health status in real time during emergency. The behavior of people during an emergency is unpredictable, which creates an additional risk factor in efficient and complete evacuation and prioritized assistance.
3) Ships are huge steel structures which consist of a very challenging environment for wireless communications. Extreme multipath prohibits the large deployment of low powered wireless sensor networks while it also induces significant challenges in real time localization/tracking.
4) The deployment of thousand of wireless sensor notes induces many challenges in the communication system as far as robust routing, communication protocols, and bandwidth availability is concerned.
5) The technical barriers for robust wireless sensor network deployment in ships prohibit the deployment of various emergency monitoring sensors which will enable efficient monitoring of the emergency (fire, water ingress) spreading. As a result, current monitoring systems do not provide a full picture of the escalation of the emergency, thus the decision support systems are insufficient since they lack real-time information feedback from the emergency surrounding environment.
6) Unavailability of low-cost and robust technology able to localize people in the sea. GPS based systems have not been commercialized in this industry mainly due to their very high cost for mass deployment.
The objective of the LYNCEUS project was to investigate and demonstrate ultra-low power wireless body-area-network technologies for enabling unobtrusive localisation and tracking of people for onboard and overboard search and rescue as well as for safe evacuation of ships during emergency. The LYNCEUS technology has succeeded in revolutionising current emergency management and ship evacuation practice through the development of beyond the state-of-the-art real-time emergency management and safe evacuation systems which significantly contribute towards early localisation and rescue of people in danger located onboard a ship or in the sea. This was achieved through the following four research and development areas.
1. Onboard Localisation:
The principle of the LYNCEUS tracking procedure is the localization/tracking of moving smart life jackets and wrist bracelets. The project builds on a ultra low-power radio frequency (RF) and digital signal processing (DSP) system-on-chip (SoC) technology which is combined with new innovative wearable antennas, low power communication protocols and low-power embedded electronics for various marine products. Namely, the LYNCEUS technology introduces a new generation of ‘smart’ life-jackets with an embedded wireless sensor node and miniaturised close-to-body wearable antennas able to be uniquely identified in the network. In order to facilitate the localisation of such moving life-jacket nodes, LYNCEUS also developed sensor gateways which could be easily integrated in the ship’s existing communication or safety infrastructure in order to facilitate a network able to collect information from the moving smart life jackets and perform localization/tracking of each passenger. The localisation information gathered by the LYNCEUS ‘smart’ gateways is sent to the central system via cable, while wireless links are used as an additional redundant network in case the first one is damaged. LYNCEUS technology therefore significantly outperforms current RFID based systems which have a limited communication range, are not able to acquire, process and transmit any sensor information, and require the deployment of a completely new infrastructure (RFID readers) that escalates the implementation cost.
2. Passenger behaviour and health monitoring:
LYNCEUS introduces the integration of miniature sensors within LYNCEUS wireless nodes and the use of innovative sensor signal processing techniques in order to provide basic behavioural and motion information to the central evacuation decision support system. Embedded sensors provide information about passenger movement in order to identify whether the passenger is active in case of an emergency situation. This information is extremely important so as to identify people that are trapped, have collapsed or are unconscious, but still alive, and to prioritise assistance. Motion sensors when combined with health monitoring sensors, enhance the ability of the decision support system to guide the ship’s rescue teams for finding/tracking the lost passengers within the ship.
3. Real time monitoring for emergency management:
LYNCEUS integrates ‘smart’ localization/tracking with identification devices and embedded wireless modules able to acquire data from a variety of sensors. In this way, a single integrated system can provide all localisation, behavioural, motion and emergency related information at the same time to a single real time monitoring and emergency management support system, capable of providing a quick and accurate decision support to the ship’s command. Intelligent decision support algorithms based on the industry’s standard evacuation procedures are being used so as to fuse and process the vast amount of data received, thus enabling accurate decision support.
4. Overboard Localisation:
The LYNCEUS project also provides a reliable and low cost localization/tracking system for persons overboard employing an optimised, compact, and light-weighted electronic device, which uses an active reflector localisation technology by means of miniaturised radar embedded in the lifejacket. Those active reflector devices consume less power and offer vastly larger detection ranges at better accuracies compared to RFID technologies. Moreover, if integrated in silicon technology, such a reflector patch comprises a low cost solution for overboard localization and can be massively deployed in life-jackets, as opposed to current GPS based solutions. Compared to the state-of-the-art search and rescue procedures which are based on detecting the lights coming from the individual’s lifejacket lamp or on hearing the life-jacket’s whistle, a more reliable localization and identification is achieved by the active reflector technology. The project is developing the active reflector-based radar by using a UAV as a base station, able to localise the ‘smart’ lifejackets during its flight. The radar scans the area from certain positions during a single flight, which means that a single UAV is able to localise all passengers overboard. The advantage of such a UAV is the possibility to localise individual passengers in record-breaking times, to communicate their position and identification to the nearest costal Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre even under very harsh sea conditions and in complete darkness.
A conceptual overview of the LYNCEUS platform, which integrates all the functionalities of the aforementioned technologies, is illustrated in Figure 1. The realization of these systems has been achieved by meeting the following set of technological objectives, as these were outlined in the original LYNCEUS description of work:
• Study and development of ultra low-power wireless nodes which are light-weighted and compact, in order to fit within devices such as lifejackets, other on-body worn equipment and fire/smoke detectors.
• Development of a localization technology based on active reflectors for low power consumption and large node lifetime
• Study and development of tiny/slim antennas for the wireless nodes, active reflector, gateways and interrogator, including their feeding networks
• Study and development of a ultra-low power wireless communication protocol to be robust enough to support numerous nodes interacting at the same time ensuring continuous network operations and minimum data losses
• Study and development of real time localization algorithms and systems in the presence of high density of transmitting nodes for both overboard and onboard tracking
• Study and development of motional and health monitoring sensor platform using off-the-shelf common sensors and embedded signal processing software library
• Study and development of low powered wireless gateways to the wired data infrastructure
• Study and development of efficient emergency management and safe evacuation decision support algorithms
• Development and validation of prototype wireless localization technology
• Realization of functional demonstrators with the end-user SME-AGs, including onboard localization/tracking, real-time monitoring of the escalation/progress of the ship and visualization at the central decision support system, passenger identity verification and overboard localization
[1] Evaluating the cost-effectiveness of a monitoring system for improved evacuation from passenger ships, Erik Vanema; Joanne Ellis , Safety Science, Elsevier,Volume 48, p.788-802 , (2010)
Project Results:
The final results of the LYNCEUS project as described in the original DoW have been delivered, and in some cases we were able to surpass our initial goals. Namely, LYNCEUS successfully produced the following:
1) LYNCEUS ultra low power wireless node module: We were able to deliver a single LYNCEUS wireless node, which is low power and has a small form factor, so that the same basic hardware can fit both into life-jackets and bracelets. The same hardware integrates all communication and localization functionalities, and most of the sensors. An add-in sensor platform for tracking basic health status was developed for the bracelet node.
2) LYNCEUS active reflector module: The LYNCEUS active reflector module is the core element of the LYNCEUS overboard people localisation system and the overboard passenger counting and identification device. It embeds the pulsed active reflector designed in a silicon technology and the associated documentation. The result is the active reflector component with its associated antenna integrated in a lifejacket and its relevant documentation.
3) LYNCEUS wireless node gateway module: The LYNCEUS wireless gateway to the wireline fire detection system infrastructure is a main component of the onboard localisation system. The gateway developed and demonstrated is a modular design, so that it can be used to produce a family of products, each having a different backbone interface for supporting different ship communication wireline infrastructures. We demonstrated this capability with an Ethernet based wireline backbone network. The overall result is a gateway hardware board with its associated antenna integrated in a smoke detector with its associate wireline connection and relevant documentation.
4) LYNCEUS handheld reflector module: The handheld active reflector interrogator based on RFID technology. The overall result is a PDA with the corresponding mobile application and associated documentation.
5) LYNCEUS UAV active reflector interrogator radar: The UAV mounted interrogator based on a customised LYNCEUS hardware board for executing real time localisation. The overall result is the processing board, active reflector interrogator and antenna in the form of UAV radar and its associated documentation.
6) LYNCEUS On board localisation software modules: The software components and associated localisation algorithms for real-time onboard people localisation and its associated documentation.
7) LYNCEUS Overboard localisation software modules: The software components and associated localisation algorithms for real-time overboard people localisation and its associated documentation.
8) LYNCEUS Emergency management decision support software modules: The software components and associated decision support algorithms for real-time information processing, decision support and visualisation of results.
The high-level architecture of the system which meets the project objectives and integrates the aforementioned results into a single system is shown in Figure 2, describing the central station, identification, counting, on-board localization and overboard localization functional blocks, respectively.
A more detailed description of the foreground results achieved, is given in the following paragraphs.
Project Result 1: LYNCEUS ultra low power wireless node module
The ultra low power wireless node module is a small form factor module capable of being used both in life-jackets and bracelets. The common hardware and embedded software used in both cases includes components for localization, low-power wireless communication, and sensing of basic parameters like motion and temperature. Motion sensing is used for discovering passengers who do not actively take part in the evacuation process, while temperature information is helpful to assess the severity of the situation. Most of the time the battery-powered wireless modules are in low-power sleep mode, which extends their lifetime, and only sporadically report on their status. Their full functionality is triggered by central command whenever needed. When used in life-jackets, the wireless node modules are equipped with a specialized activation hardware mechanism that enables triggering full functionality uniquely if they are actually worn. When used in bracelets, the wireless module are connected to a heartbeat sensor placed on a separate board (within the black protection in Figure 3), for implementing the activity monitoring functions.
Activity monitoring is based on two main functions: motion sensing using accelerometers, and heart rate monitoring using low-cost, low-power light emitting diodes and photodiodes. The relative acceleration of a person indicates whether the person is moving and participating in the evacuation process; a digital heart beat sensor allows having a quick appreciation of the person status. The node is capable of performing basic processing so that it reduces the amount of information sent over the network. For example, the bracelet node processes data coming from the heart rate sensor, as this is seen in Figure 4, and acceleration data shown in Figure 5. It then performs some signal processing on the raw data, so that it can send an alarm to the central station when a threshold has been reached. The threshold value is adjusted so that it accounts for loss of signal integrity, and reduces the amount of false negative alarms.
Project Result 2: LYNCEUS active reflector module
The LYNCEUS active reflector module is the core element of the LYNCEUS overboard people localisation system and the overboard passenger counting and identification device. It embeds the pulsed active reflector designed in a silicon technology and the associated documentation. The hardware developed during this project merges the best characteristics of two distinct technologies: RFIDs and wireless beacons. The former are often used in localization applications when minimal power dissipation is needed, but suffer from extremely small ranges. The latter can reach larger distances, but they need much more transmission power, suffering from small lifetimes.
The active reflector, when used with the LYNCEUS UAV interrogator radar, can be detected at distances up to 1000 meters away from the UAV. Additionally, due to the foreground technology developed during the project, it has minimal power dissipation. The basic design of the active reflector hardware was developed using 180 nm IBM SiGe BiCMOS silicon technology. The basic circuitry of the device, as shown in Figure 6, takes up minimal space, making it ideal for the targeted application, and expected production volume.
The aforementioned hardware was integrated into an electronic system for testing purposes, following the specifications set up by project SMEs and SME-AGs. The hardware is enclosed into a waterproof casing, as shown in Figures 7(a) and 7(b).
The electronic system integrates all the communication, identification and localization components needed for demonstrating the advantages of the proposed technology, together with a battery and water sensor used for activating the device only when it hits the water. The hardware developed was capable to achieve localization accuracy ranging from 5 to 10m. These results greatly exceeded initial expectations, and would therefore justify wide user acceptance.
Project Result 3: LYNCEUS wireless node gateway module
The LYNCEUS wireless gateway to the wireline fire detection system infrastructure is a main component of the onboard localisation system. Its role is three-fold: it acts as an anchor point in the localization process, it reports and relays information on or from the mobile devices and it interfaces the wireless network to the wireline backbone in order to propagate the collected data to the central command. The gateway developed and demonstrated is a modular design, so that it can be used to produce a family of products, each having a different backbone interface for supporting different ship communication wireline infrastructures. We demonstrated this capability with an Ethernet backbone network. In addition, the gateway modules are able to organize themselves into a low-power RF communication network based on the WiseMAC protocol, providing their functionality in an all-wireless multi-path way, as an alternative in case of backbone failure. For this case, the modules are battery-powered. The overall result is a gateway board with its associated antenna integrated in a smoke detector with its associate wireline connection and relevant documentation.
The gateway demonstrator is based on the LYNCEUS basic node, which was also used as a development platform for the project. A daughter board was developed in order to interface the wireless network to the backbone. Thanks to this modular architecture, interfacing to any type of TCP/IP-based network would be relatively easy to achieve.
Two versions of the daughter network board were actually achieved. At first, a commercial component (Lantronix XPort) was tested, bridging Ethernet to a UART serial port, shown in Figure 8(a). However, its high price was finally a shortcoming outweighing its built-in capabilities and, hence, a second commercial component (WizNet-550IO, over SPI) was integrated and used in the gateway demonstrators (Figure 8(b)).
The corresponding software drivers were developed and successfully tested in both cases. In addition, the gateway nodes are able to detect an interrupted Ethernet link and switch to all-wireless, multi-hop communication. At the same time, the mobile nodes also are aware of the backbone interruption and adapt their reporting pace accordingly.
Project Result 4: LYNCEUS handheld reflector module
The handheld active reflector interrogator is based on short range RFID technology. The overall result is a PDA with the corresponding mobile application and associated documentation, shown in Figure 9. LYNCEUS RFIDs are embedded on the life-jacket casing of the wireless sensor node as shown in Figure 3(a). The Handheld Reflector is used as a reader of the LYNCEUS RFID during mustering so as to be able to associate the life-jacket and its electronics with the person wearing the life-jacket. This is done by a simple touch of the LYNCEUS Handheld reflector to the LYNCEUS RFID.
Identification and counting information is passed on the central database through the backbone network of the LYNCEUS system, so that the latter informs the graphical user interface that provides information to the officers, as described in Project Result 8.
Project Result 5: LYNCEUS UAV active reflector interrogator radar
The UAV mounted interrogator is based on a customised LYNCEUS hardware board for executing real time localisation. The overall result is the processing board, active reflector interrogator and antenna in the form of UAV radar and its associated documentation.
The hardware was developed according to user specifications and a working prototype was built on printed circuit boards (PCB), including the RF front-end PCB, the analog baseband processing boards, a GPS and FSK communication module and a FPGA PCB for digital signal processing and distance calculation. All components and PCB are integrated to one final system, shown in Figure 10. The GPS module is used for testing purposes, and it is used to notify the interrogator of the current location of the UAV. This information is then combined with the relative position information computed by the interrogator system, to provide an accurate estimation of the location of the target active reflectors at sea. This information is then communicated back to the central station of the overboard system through the FSK communication interface. The end user can replace the GPS and FSK modules of the system with interfaces to the equivalent components of their UAV.
The UAV active reflector interrogator radar has been tested in an operational environment, as shown in Figure 11, providing location information to a central station with a Google Maps™ application, showing the location of the lifejackets at sea.
Project Result 6: LYNCEUS On board localisation software modules
The software components and associated localisation algorithms for real-time onboard people localisation have been developed to address the challenging requirements of the project, in terms of accuracy, robustness, bandwidth usage and scalability. Achieved results, which outperform state of the art solutions described in the literature are outlined in the following paragraphs.
Accuracy, robustness and bandwidth usage: The developed algorithms outperform traditional received signal strength methods, when used in severe multipath environments such as the ones found onboard ships. The algorithms produce minimal location information on the nodes, while full location information is retrieved at the central station. Thus, the amount of information transmitted over the onboard wireless network and the backbone network is minimized. Furthermore, the algorithms ensure better synchronization of the measured values and therefore higher consistency of the data reaching the central station, and present robust performance even when packets are lost either due to communication problems, or due to gateway failure. Finally, the algorithms require minimal processing at the node or gateway level, bringing down cost of these devices, while maximizing their battery lifetime. The accuracy achieved using our methods, is in the order of 5 meters, with low latency and reduced location “jitter”, for standard onboard fire system deployments.
Scalability: The onboard system targets big numbers, with the mobile devices reaching a few thousand in total and with expected high densities at various places of the vessel. However, in project tests we were able to test number in order of 15 to 20 nodes. In order to assess the scalability of the system, simulations were conducted, using the Omnet™ tool. The simulations assume the target conditions, protocol parametrizations and assess channel occupancy as those observed in real tests. The results show that, in the case of 200 nodes “competing” to send their beacons over the same gateway, the medium is not overloaded (20% occupation). These results show that the system will be reliable even in the presence of large densities of people, as those observed onboard large cruise ships.
Project Result 7: LYNCEUS Overboard localisation software modules
The software components and associated localisation algorithms were developed and implemented for estimating the location of multiple people wearing a life-jacket in the sea. They are specially designed for use under typical search flight paths used in search and rescue operations over the emergency area, as described in Figure 12.
The localisation algorithm is making use of active reflector wireless transmission link status information (Received Signal Strength Indicator, Angle of Arrival and Roundtrip-Time-of-Flight) and the exact position of the UAV on each interrogation sequence. It combines this information with ranging information measured using the FMCW radar concept, using baseband signal processing algorithms embedded into the UAV active reflector interrogator radar hardware.
With the hardware developed in this project system tests were carried out. Measurements in free field for the cross-coupled SILO (CC-SILO) and the common-base Colpitts SILO (CBC-SILO) were conducted.
With the CC-SILO distance measurements were conducted with an average accuracy of 44 cm and an average precision of 39 cm. Diagrams displaying accuracy, precision and average error are displayed in Figures 13 and 14.
The use of the CBC-SILO produced an average accuracy of 53 cm and an average precision of 42 cm. Diagrams displaying accuracy, precision and average error are displayed in Figures 15 and 16.
Project Result 8: LYNCEUS Emergency management decision support software modules
This result includes the software components and associated decision support algorithms for real-time information processing, decision support and visualisation of results. The decision support system includes all the software components capable of integrating all sensing, localization, identification, and time information, and integrates it into a single platform, called the central station. The information is then processed through a graphical user interface, which has been developed as per reported user needs. Screenshot of this interface are shown in Figures 17 and 18.
The graphical user interface integrates information of different types of users (passengers, crew, people in critical condition, groups of people), identification details, and also depicts disaster escalation information, as shown in Figure 19.
The LYNCEUS software captures alarms created by nodes and gateways, based on person movement information reported by life jackets and bracelets, heart beat information by bracelets, and environmental parameters like temperature and ship motion reported by gateways. To reduce communication overhead, assessment of a critical situation with respect to absence of motion and heart beat measurement is a distributed process, with decisions mostly taken at the embedded device itself, in which case the devices only send alerts in case of anomaly. However, in order to tune time delays, this functionality can also be handled centrally, at the database, based on regular sensor measurement reports from the wireless devices.
In summary, the whole decision support system has been designed in order to receive, process and present all useful information to the officers in a familiar and consistent way. Special attention has been given in order to avoid overloading the GUI with unnecessary information that would confuse rather than help the users. User interface (UI) design was focused on anticipating what the users need ensuring that the interface has elements that are easy to access, understand, and use. All latest developments in software engineering as well as best practices in UI design have been followed so as any additional information requested by the users is given in one touch/ one click, optimizing the usability and user acceptance of the LYNCEUS system.
Potential Impact:
The results of the LYNCEUS project will be exploited by the SME-AG and SME partners in different forms and significant international market potential is forecasted in the segments targeted by the LYNCEUS SME-AGs and SMEs:
1. Life saving and survival marine equipment
The major market interest is for smart lifejackets with embedded LYNCEUS wireless technology that will support people localisation in the ship and in the sea. CAMPI, ATEVAL and FMV are targeting the cruise and ferry industry initially (which is the largest buyer) and then lower volume industries such as cargo transportation, fishing and yachting industries. The global lifejacket market for the cruise industry is approximately 600,000 new units per year, estimated at €12M, with a forecasted [2] growth per year around 5%. CAMPI is currently supplying lifejackets (able to meet the last SOLAS Chapter III standard in force dated 1.7.2010 as per Res. MSC 200(80)) for 5-6% of the global market and is targeting a bigger penetration by the introduction of a localisable smart jacket. In addition to the above figures which are based on the annual industry needs, the standardisation of the technology will give a significant boost in sales since there are millions of lifejackets now available that should be upgraded with the LYNCEUS localisable patch. In that case CAMPI, ATEVAL and FMV are expected to capitalise their investment and become world market leaders.
2. Fire detection and smoke alarm marine equipment
The installation of a smoke and fire detection system onboard is compulsory for each existing and new passenger ship. It consists of smoke detectors placed in every space/area of the ship (depending on the size of the area) which are all linked together in a central console located at the bridge. The specific market ranges from pleasure yachts, cargo ships and Ro/Ro to large cruise ships which are the most significant buyers. On average, each large cruise ship has between 5000 to 6000 smoke alarm sensors while very large cruise ships like the Oasis of the Seas number around 11000 sensors. When considering an average number of sensors of 6000 and the total yearly demand which is around 100 systems per year then the global industry in smoke detectors for ships totals approximately 35M€. SFM, FMV, SEPVE and ETEK expect to start with a market share of about 10% for the cruise industry, as a starting point, which accounts a total of €3.5M per year. This percentage is expected to be increased with the catch-up of the technology and escalate to very high percentage with the standardisation of the technology. In this case, the retrofitting market will become the main market since there are thousands of cruise ships with hundreds of thousands of sensors to be upgraded.
3. Safe evacuation and emergency management decision support systems
The major market interest is for emergency management software which will be able to process in real time a vast amount of sensorial information and perform efficient emergency management and safe evacuation decision support. OPTIONS, FMV and SEPVE have identified this industry to be a completely new application area since the specific data would be available to decision support systems for the first time. OPTIONS aims to deliver the first software package that could efficiently store, process and visualise the sensorial data and provide real-time decision support feedback, and expects about €20M in 5 years, which corresponds to initial installations, upgrades and maintenance agreements.
4. Maritime search and rescue equipment and services
Coastal Search and Rescue operations are considered as extremely costly. A coast guard C-130 aircraft cost about 4,500€ an hour to operate; coast guard helicopters cost about 5,000€ an hour; coast guard cutters cost about 1,550€ an hour to operate; and coast guard small boats also cost between 300€ to 400€ an hour to run. If we account the personnel needed and also the time that aerial vehicles and boats should operate to complete a mission then the total cost escalates to tens of thousands euros for a single mission. The specific industry which is mainly driven by public funding is considered a huge industry since the cost of acquisition of the search and rescue means is significant. For example the cost of a search and rescue C-130 aeroplane is around US$62 million, a coast guard helicopter (such as the Eurocopter HH-65 Dolphin) around US$8-10 million, a SAR UAV around US$10.5 million and a search and rescue boat around $800,000. GGD is in the position to penetrate the specific market offering its low cost ASARP [3] UAV with approximate price 400-600k of euro. GGD expects to integrate the LYNCEUS interrogator for specific in-sea people localisation missions and achieve a market of about 20M€ in the first five years. ETEK and CAMPI expects to also benefit from the specific industry through the commercialisation of the UAV localisable smart jackets.
[2] Lloyd’s Register Fairplay, Shipbuilding Market Forecast, Issue No.26
[3] http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/
List of Websites:
http://www.lynceus-project.eu
The LYNCEUS project investigated and demonstrated ultra-low power wireless body area network technologies for enabling unobtrusive localisation and tracking of people for onboard and overboard search and rescue as well as for safe evacuation of ships during emergency. The technology developed during the project timeframe revolutionises current emergency management and ship evacuation practice through the development of beyond the state-of-the-art real-time emergency management and safe evacuation systems, which will significantly contribute towards early localisation and rescue of people in danger located onboard a ship or in the sea.
Through its consortium, the LYNCEUS novel technology was transferred into the SME-driven market segments of smoke alarm/fire detection systems, lifesaving equipment, emergency management decision support systems and assistive search and rescue equipment, aiming at the generation of a high societal and market impact for the European SMEs in the near future.
The primary safe evacuation and search and rescue application areas where the LYNCEUS technology pushes the technology beyond the state-of-the-art and significantly contributes towards minimizing the risk of loss of life are summarized below:
* People localisation in ship: Even though there are various systems for wireless sensor localization, it is the first time that such a system exists for the extremely demanding environment of a ship. LYNCEUS provides a breakthrough for the current ‘manual’ approach since it gives search and rescue teams a novel tool for localising people and ensuring that they have been safely evacuated.
* Passenger status monitoring: LYNCEUS revolutionizes the current safe evacuation decision making approaches since it enables for the first time real time monitoring of basic behavioural information of passengers. Knowing whether passengers and crew are actively taking part in the evacuation process will significantly contribute towards efficient rescue prioritisation and optimisation of safety crew resource allocation.
* Emergency progress/escalation: The project significantly adds to the current systems’ capabilities by offering a wireless network where ad-hoc sensor nodes could be easily deployed to monitor a vast range of parameters that describe the current situation of the emergency in a dynamic changing environment.
* Passenger counting and identification: The LYNCEUS technology introduces an automatic approach for passenger identification and counting at muster stations and life rafts, minimising errors that may occur through the current verbal identification process. LYNCEUS can provide each individual’s identity by associating his lifejacket with information from the ship’s manifest using a user friendly and reliable handheld device, thus ensuring an accurate, reliable and time efficient counting and identification system.
* Safe evacuation and emergency management decision support: LYNCEUS provides the safe evacuation and emergency management decision making process with a vast amount of information about passenger’s position and behaviour in real time. This unique information feeds advanced decision support algorithms which provide efficient decision making support based on real time data.
* People localisation in sea: The use of Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV) together with an innovative active radio beacon technology will revolutionise the current search and rescue processes/techniques since a person overboard will be able to transmit its position through the LYNCEUS technology embedded in his life jacket.
In summary, LYNCEUS has created a family of technologies which will push current practices from ship localisation to individual people overboard localisation and identification.
Project Context and Objectives:
A large number of studies and investigations have been carried out the last few years following casualties involving ships. These studies identified the need to improve the evacuation, mustering and abandoning procedures, especially on passenger ships, as these are getting larger and larger; with some cruise ships reaching the capacity of more than 8000 people onboard. An essential stage in the above procedures is the counting and accounting for all persons onboard a passenger ship and controlling their movement for safe abandoning. The importance of this stage has been further highlighted in the relevant sections of the STCW Convention and Code of 1995 as amended; for passenger ships; namely the requirements of section V/2 & V/3 of the STCW Code for Ro- Ro and passenger ships respectively.
The reports from the investigation of various serious incidents or casualties on passenger ships which resulted loss of life revealed and highlighted the urgent need for improvements in the evacuation, mustering and abandoning procedures and especially on tracking and locating the whereabouts of each person onboard, at first, and secondly on the proper and correct counting of people. The last two are considered as the weak link in the whole process of ensuring the safe evacuation of all persons onboard. Despite the huge investment in maritime technology today, there is a significant drawback in all onboard systems used for the safe evacuation of people in the sense that there is not at present any technology which will enable real-time localisation, tracking and behavioural monitoring of all people onboard the ship during a real emergency evacuation. This inefficiency puts a great strain on the Master, Officers and crew when faced with a real emergency since the unknown location of the passengers onboard on real time may result in a sub-optimum response. The investigation of many of these incidents involving loss of life has identified two major areas where the search and rescue capabilities of both the ship and shore facilities could have been improved with the application of new innovative technologies:
A: Onboard passenger and crew localisation/tracking during a real emergency evacuation from a ship
The lack of technology that allows the ship’s command to locate and track passengers in real time in case of an emergency and also provide this information to a centralized control system for an efficient assessment of the emergency is a significant barrier in the development of a reliable and efficient Decision Support System that would minimize the risk of incomplete evacuation of a ship.
B: Passenger and crew localisation after abandoning the ship, for search and rescue
Even though current systems deployed in all ships include technologies that help locate ships in emergencies, the problem of localising individual passengers which have gone overboard and may float in the sea away from the vicinity of the emergency due to extreme weather or ocean currents, remains a major issue in search and rescue operations. As a result, the industry still counts loss of passengers at sea.
Tackling of the aforementioned problems remained previously unsolved mainly due to major technological barriers for low cost and safe evacuation that where overpassed with the LYNCEUS technologies. These included the following:
1) Unavailability of extremely low powered, low cost wireless technology which could be embedded in wearable items such as life jackets, or bracelets, and enable real time localization/tracking of the person wearing them. Techniques based on RFID tags [1] are limited to counting of passengers while limited transmission range requires a large number of RFID readers, thus escalating the cost.
2) Unavailability of technology to monitor passenger behavior and health status in real time during emergency. The behavior of people during an emergency is unpredictable, which creates an additional risk factor in efficient and complete evacuation and prioritized assistance.
3) Ships are huge steel structures which consist of a very challenging environment for wireless communications. Extreme multipath prohibits the large deployment of low powered wireless sensor networks while it also induces significant challenges in real time localization/tracking.
4) The deployment of thousand of wireless sensor notes induces many challenges in the communication system as far as robust routing, communication protocols, and bandwidth availability is concerned.
5) The technical barriers for robust wireless sensor network deployment in ships prohibit the deployment of various emergency monitoring sensors which will enable efficient monitoring of the emergency (fire, water ingress) spreading. As a result, current monitoring systems do not provide a full picture of the escalation of the emergency, thus the decision support systems are insufficient since they lack real-time information feedback from the emergency surrounding environment.
6) Unavailability of low-cost and robust technology able to localize people in the sea. GPS based systems have not been commercialized in this industry mainly due to their very high cost for mass deployment.
The objective of the LYNCEUS project was to investigate and demonstrate ultra-low power wireless body-area-network technologies for enabling unobtrusive localisation and tracking of people for onboard and overboard search and rescue as well as for safe evacuation of ships during emergency. The LYNCEUS technology has succeeded in revolutionising current emergency management and ship evacuation practice through the development of beyond the state-of-the-art real-time emergency management and safe evacuation systems which significantly contribute towards early localisation and rescue of people in danger located onboard a ship or in the sea. This was achieved through the following four research and development areas.
1. Onboard Localisation:
The principle of the LYNCEUS tracking procedure is the localization/tracking of moving smart life jackets and wrist bracelets. The project builds on a ultra low-power radio frequency (RF) and digital signal processing (DSP) system-on-chip (SoC) technology which is combined with new innovative wearable antennas, low power communication protocols and low-power embedded electronics for various marine products. Namely, the LYNCEUS technology introduces a new generation of ‘smart’ life-jackets with an embedded wireless sensor node and miniaturised close-to-body wearable antennas able to be uniquely identified in the network. In order to facilitate the localisation of such moving life-jacket nodes, LYNCEUS also developed sensor gateways which could be easily integrated in the ship’s existing communication or safety infrastructure in order to facilitate a network able to collect information from the moving smart life jackets and perform localization/tracking of each passenger. The localisation information gathered by the LYNCEUS ‘smart’ gateways is sent to the central system via cable, while wireless links are used as an additional redundant network in case the first one is damaged. LYNCEUS technology therefore significantly outperforms current RFID based systems which have a limited communication range, are not able to acquire, process and transmit any sensor information, and require the deployment of a completely new infrastructure (RFID readers) that escalates the implementation cost.
2. Passenger behaviour and health monitoring:
LYNCEUS introduces the integration of miniature sensors within LYNCEUS wireless nodes and the use of innovative sensor signal processing techniques in order to provide basic behavioural and motion information to the central evacuation decision support system. Embedded sensors provide information about passenger movement in order to identify whether the passenger is active in case of an emergency situation. This information is extremely important so as to identify people that are trapped, have collapsed or are unconscious, but still alive, and to prioritise assistance. Motion sensors when combined with health monitoring sensors, enhance the ability of the decision support system to guide the ship’s rescue teams for finding/tracking the lost passengers within the ship.
3. Real time monitoring for emergency management:
LYNCEUS integrates ‘smart’ localization/tracking with identification devices and embedded wireless modules able to acquire data from a variety of sensors. In this way, a single integrated system can provide all localisation, behavioural, motion and emergency related information at the same time to a single real time monitoring and emergency management support system, capable of providing a quick and accurate decision support to the ship’s command. Intelligent decision support algorithms based on the industry’s standard evacuation procedures are being used so as to fuse and process the vast amount of data received, thus enabling accurate decision support.
4. Overboard Localisation:
The LYNCEUS project also provides a reliable and low cost localization/tracking system for persons overboard employing an optimised, compact, and light-weighted electronic device, which uses an active reflector localisation technology by means of miniaturised radar embedded in the lifejacket. Those active reflector devices consume less power and offer vastly larger detection ranges at better accuracies compared to RFID technologies. Moreover, if integrated in silicon technology, such a reflector patch comprises a low cost solution for overboard localization and can be massively deployed in life-jackets, as opposed to current GPS based solutions. Compared to the state-of-the-art search and rescue procedures which are based on detecting the lights coming from the individual’s lifejacket lamp or on hearing the life-jacket’s whistle, a more reliable localization and identification is achieved by the active reflector technology. The project is developing the active reflector-based radar by using a UAV as a base station, able to localise the ‘smart’ lifejackets during its flight. The radar scans the area from certain positions during a single flight, which means that a single UAV is able to localise all passengers overboard. The advantage of such a UAV is the possibility to localise individual passengers in record-breaking times, to communicate their position and identification to the nearest costal Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre even under very harsh sea conditions and in complete darkness.
A conceptual overview of the LYNCEUS platform, which integrates all the functionalities of the aforementioned technologies, is illustrated in Figure 1. The realization of these systems has been achieved by meeting the following set of technological objectives, as these were outlined in the original LYNCEUS description of work:
• Study and development of ultra low-power wireless nodes which are light-weighted and compact, in order to fit within devices such as lifejackets, other on-body worn equipment and fire/smoke detectors.
• Development of a localization technology based on active reflectors for low power consumption and large node lifetime
• Study and development of tiny/slim antennas for the wireless nodes, active reflector, gateways and interrogator, including their feeding networks
• Study and development of a ultra-low power wireless communication protocol to be robust enough to support numerous nodes interacting at the same time ensuring continuous network operations and minimum data losses
• Study and development of real time localization algorithms and systems in the presence of high density of transmitting nodes for both overboard and onboard tracking
• Study and development of motional and health monitoring sensor platform using off-the-shelf common sensors and embedded signal processing software library
• Study and development of low powered wireless gateways to the wired data infrastructure
• Study and development of efficient emergency management and safe evacuation decision support algorithms
• Development and validation of prototype wireless localization technology
• Realization of functional demonstrators with the end-user SME-AGs, including onboard localization/tracking, real-time monitoring of the escalation/progress of the ship and visualization at the central decision support system, passenger identity verification and overboard localization
[1] Evaluating the cost-effectiveness of a monitoring system for improved evacuation from passenger ships, Erik Vanema; Joanne Ellis , Safety Science, Elsevier,Volume 48, p.788-802 , (2010)
Project Results:
The final results of the LYNCEUS project as described in the original DoW have been delivered, and in some cases we were able to surpass our initial goals. Namely, LYNCEUS successfully produced the following:
1) LYNCEUS ultra low power wireless node module: We were able to deliver a single LYNCEUS wireless node, which is low power and has a small form factor, so that the same basic hardware can fit both into life-jackets and bracelets. The same hardware integrates all communication and localization functionalities, and most of the sensors. An add-in sensor platform for tracking basic health status was developed for the bracelet node.
2) LYNCEUS active reflector module: The LYNCEUS active reflector module is the core element of the LYNCEUS overboard people localisation system and the overboard passenger counting and identification device. It embeds the pulsed active reflector designed in a silicon technology and the associated documentation. The result is the active reflector component with its associated antenna integrated in a lifejacket and its relevant documentation.
3) LYNCEUS wireless node gateway module: The LYNCEUS wireless gateway to the wireline fire detection system infrastructure is a main component of the onboard localisation system. The gateway developed and demonstrated is a modular design, so that it can be used to produce a family of products, each having a different backbone interface for supporting different ship communication wireline infrastructures. We demonstrated this capability with an Ethernet based wireline backbone network. The overall result is a gateway hardware board with its associated antenna integrated in a smoke detector with its associate wireline connection and relevant documentation.
4) LYNCEUS handheld reflector module: The handheld active reflector interrogator based on RFID technology. The overall result is a PDA with the corresponding mobile application and associated documentation.
5) LYNCEUS UAV active reflector interrogator radar: The UAV mounted interrogator based on a customised LYNCEUS hardware board for executing real time localisation. The overall result is the processing board, active reflector interrogator and antenna in the form of UAV radar and its associated documentation.
6) LYNCEUS On board localisation software modules: The software components and associated localisation algorithms for real-time onboard people localisation and its associated documentation.
7) LYNCEUS Overboard localisation software modules: The software components and associated localisation algorithms for real-time overboard people localisation and its associated documentation.
8) LYNCEUS Emergency management decision support software modules: The software components and associated decision support algorithms for real-time information processing, decision support and visualisation of results.
The high-level architecture of the system which meets the project objectives and integrates the aforementioned results into a single system is shown in Figure 2, describing the central station, identification, counting, on-board localization and overboard localization functional blocks, respectively.
A more detailed description of the foreground results achieved, is given in the following paragraphs.
Project Result 1: LYNCEUS ultra low power wireless node module
The ultra low power wireless node module is a small form factor module capable of being used both in life-jackets and bracelets. The common hardware and embedded software used in both cases includes components for localization, low-power wireless communication, and sensing of basic parameters like motion and temperature. Motion sensing is used for discovering passengers who do not actively take part in the evacuation process, while temperature information is helpful to assess the severity of the situation. Most of the time the battery-powered wireless modules are in low-power sleep mode, which extends their lifetime, and only sporadically report on their status. Their full functionality is triggered by central command whenever needed. When used in life-jackets, the wireless node modules are equipped with a specialized activation hardware mechanism that enables triggering full functionality uniquely if they are actually worn. When used in bracelets, the wireless module are connected to a heartbeat sensor placed on a separate board (within the black protection in Figure 3), for implementing the activity monitoring functions.
Activity monitoring is based on two main functions: motion sensing using accelerometers, and heart rate monitoring using low-cost, low-power light emitting diodes and photodiodes. The relative acceleration of a person indicates whether the person is moving and participating in the evacuation process; a digital heart beat sensor allows having a quick appreciation of the person status. The node is capable of performing basic processing so that it reduces the amount of information sent over the network. For example, the bracelet node processes data coming from the heart rate sensor, as this is seen in Figure 4, and acceleration data shown in Figure 5. It then performs some signal processing on the raw data, so that it can send an alarm to the central station when a threshold has been reached. The threshold value is adjusted so that it accounts for loss of signal integrity, and reduces the amount of false negative alarms.
Project Result 2: LYNCEUS active reflector module
The LYNCEUS active reflector module is the core element of the LYNCEUS overboard people localisation system and the overboard passenger counting and identification device. It embeds the pulsed active reflector designed in a silicon technology and the associated documentation. The hardware developed during this project merges the best characteristics of two distinct technologies: RFIDs and wireless beacons. The former are often used in localization applications when minimal power dissipation is needed, but suffer from extremely small ranges. The latter can reach larger distances, but they need much more transmission power, suffering from small lifetimes.
The active reflector, when used with the LYNCEUS UAV interrogator radar, can be detected at distances up to 1000 meters away from the UAV. Additionally, due to the foreground technology developed during the project, it has minimal power dissipation. The basic design of the active reflector hardware was developed using 180 nm IBM SiGe BiCMOS silicon technology. The basic circuitry of the device, as shown in Figure 6, takes up minimal space, making it ideal for the targeted application, and expected production volume.
The aforementioned hardware was integrated into an electronic system for testing purposes, following the specifications set up by project SMEs and SME-AGs. The hardware is enclosed into a waterproof casing, as shown in Figures 7(a) and 7(b).
The electronic system integrates all the communication, identification and localization components needed for demonstrating the advantages of the proposed technology, together with a battery and water sensor used for activating the device only when it hits the water. The hardware developed was capable to achieve localization accuracy ranging from 5 to 10m. These results greatly exceeded initial expectations, and would therefore justify wide user acceptance.
Project Result 3: LYNCEUS wireless node gateway module
The LYNCEUS wireless gateway to the wireline fire detection system infrastructure is a main component of the onboard localisation system. Its role is three-fold: it acts as an anchor point in the localization process, it reports and relays information on or from the mobile devices and it interfaces the wireless network to the wireline backbone in order to propagate the collected data to the central command. The gateway developed and demonstrated is a modular design, so that it can be used to produce a family of products, each having a different backbone interface for supporting different ship communication wireline infrastructures. We demonstrated this capability with an Ethernet backbone network. In addition, the gateway modules are able to organize themselves into a low-power RF communication network based on the WiseMAC protocol, providing their functionality in an all-wireless multi-path way, as an alternative in case of backbone failure. For this case, the modules are battery-powered. The overall result is a gateway board with its associated antenna integrated in a smoke detector with its associate wireline connection and relevant documentation.
The gateway demonstrator is based on the LYNCEUS basic node, which was also used as a development platform for the project. A daughter board was developed in order to interface the wireless network to the backbone. Thanks to this modular architecture, interfacing to any type of TCP/IP-based network would be relatively easy to achieve.
Two versions of the daughter network board were actually achieved. At first, a commercial component (Lantronix XPort) was tested, bridging Ethernet to a UART serial port, shown in Figure 8(a). However, its high price was finally a shortcoming outweighing its built-in capabilities and, hence, a second commercial component (WizNet-550IO, over SPI) was integrated and used in the gateway demonstrators (Figure 8(b)).
The corresponding software drivers were developed and successfully tested in both cases. In addition, the gateway nodes are able to detect an interrupted Ethernet link and switch to all-wireless, multi-hop communication. At the same time, the mobile nodes also are aware of the backbone interruption and adapt their reporting pace accordingly.
Project Result 4: LYNCEUS handheld reflector module
The handheld active reflector interrogator is based on short range RFID technology. The overall result is a PDA with the corresponding mobile application and associated documentation, shown in Figure 9. LYNCEUS RFIDs are embedded on the life-jacket casing of the wireless sensor node as shown in Figure 3(a). The Handheld Reflector is used as a reader of the LYNCEUS RFID during mustering so as to be able to associate the life-jacket and its electronics with the person wearing the life-jacket. This is done by a simple touch of the LYNCEUS Handheld reflector to the LYNCEUS RFID.
Identification and counting information is passed on the central database through the backbone network of the LYNCEUS system, so that the latter informs the graphical user interface that provides information to the officers, as described in Project Result 8.
Project Result 5: LYNCEUS UAV active reflector interrogator radar
The UAV mounted interrogator is based on a customised LYNCEUS hardware board for executing real time localisation. The overall result is the processing board, active reflector interrogator and antenna in the form of UAV radar and its associated documentation.
The hardware was developed according to user specifications and a working prototype was built on printed circuit boards (PCB), including the RF front-end PCB, the analog baseband processing boards, a GPS and FSK communication module and a FPGA PCB for digital signal processing and distance calculation. All components and PCB are integrated to one final system, shown in Figure 10. The GPS module is used for testing purposes, and it is used to notify the interrogator of the current location of the UAV. This information is then combined with the relative position information computed by the interrogator system, to provide an accurate estimation of the location of the target active reflectors at sea. This information is then communicated back to the central station of the overboard system through the FSK communication interface. The end user can replace the GPS and FSK modules of the system with interfaces to the equivalent components of their UAV.
The UAV active reflector interrogator radar has been tested in an operational environment, as shown in Figure 11, providing location information to a central station with a Google Maps™ application, showing the location of the lifejackets at sea.
Project Result 6: LYNCEUS On board localisation software modules
The software components and associated localisation algorithms for real-time onboard people localisation have been developed to address the challenging requirements of the project, in terms of accuracy, robustness, bandwidth usage and scalability. Achieved results, which outperform state of the art solutions described in the literature are outlined in the following paragraphs.
Accuracy, robustness and bandwidth usage: The developed algorithms outperform traditional received signal strength methods, when used in severe multipath environments such as the ones found onboard ships. The algorithms produce minimal location information on the nodes, while full location information is retrieved at the central station. Thus, the amount of information transmitted over the onboard wireless network and the backbone network is minimized. Furthermore, the algorithms ensure better synchronization of the measured values and therefore higher consistency of the data reaching the central station, and present robust performance even when packets are lost either due to communication problems, or due to gateway failure. Finally, the algorithms require minimal processing at the node or gateway level, bringing down cost of these devices, while maximizing their battery lifetime. The accuracy achieved using our methods, is in the order of 5 meters, with low latency and reduced location “jitter”, for standard onboard fire system deployments.
Scalability: The onboard system targets big numbers, with the mobile devices reaching a few thousand in total and with expected high densities at various places of the vessel. However, in project tests we were able to test number in order of 15 to 20 nodes. In order to assess the scalability of the system, simulations were conducted, using the Omnet™ tool. The simulations assume the target conditions, protocol parametrizations and assess channel occupancy as those observed in real tests. The results show that, in the case of 200 nodes “competing” to send their beacons over the same gateway, the medium is not overloaded (20% occupation). These results show that the system will be reliable even in the presence of large densities of people, as those observed onboard large cruise ships.
Project Result 7: LYNCEUS Overboard localisation software modules
The software components and associated localisation algorithms were developed and implemented for estimating the location of multiple people wearing a life-jacket in the sea. They are specially designed for use under typical search flight paths used in search and rescue operations over the emergency area, as described in Figure 12.
The localisation algorithm is making use of active reflector wireless transmission link status information (Received Signal Strength Indicator, Angle of Arrival and Roundtrip-Time-of-Flight) and the exact position of the UAV on each interrogation sequence. It combines this information with ranging information measured using the FMCW radar concept, using baseband signal processing algorithms embedded into the UAV active reflector interrogator radar hardware.
With the hardware developed in this project system tests were carried out. Measurements in free field for the cross-coupled SILO (CC-SILO) and the common-base Colpitts SILO (CBC-SILO) were conducted.
With the CC-SILO distance measurements were conducted with an average accuracy of 44 cm and an average precision of 39 cm. Diagrams displaying accuracy, precision and average error are displayed in Figures 13 and 14.
The use of the CBC-SILO produced an average accuracy of 53 cm and an average precision of 42 cm. Diagrams displaying accuracy, precision and average error are displayed in Figures 15 and 16.
Project Result 8: LYNCEUS Emergency management decision support software modules
This result includes the software components and associated decision support algorithms for real-time information processing, decision support and visualisation of results. The decision support system includes all the software components capable of integrating all sensing, localization, identification, and time information, and integrates it into a single platform, called the central station. The information is then processed through a graphical user interface, which has been developed as per reported user needs. Screenshot of this interface are shown in Figures 17 and 18.
The graphical user interface integrates information of different types of users (passengers, crew, people in critical condition, groups of people), identification details, and also depicts disaster escalation information, as shown in Figure 19.
The LYNCEUS software captures alarms created by nodes and gateways, based on person movement information reported by life jackets and bracelets, heart beat information by bracelets, and environmental parameters like temperature and ship motion reported by gateways. To reduce communication overhead, assessment of a critical situation with respect to absence of motion and heart beat measurement is a distributed process, with decisions mostly taken at the embedded device itself, in which case the devices only send alerts in case of anomaly. However, in order to tune time delays, this functionality can also be handled centrally, at the database, based on regular sensor measurement reports from the wireless devices.
In summary, the whole decision support system has been designed in order to receive, process and present all useful information to the officers in a familiar and consistent way. Special attention has been given in order to avoid overloading the GUI with unnecessary information that would confuse rather than help the users. User interface (UI) design was focused on anticipating what the users need ensuring that the interface has elements that are easy to access, understand, and use. All latest developments in software engineering as well as best practices in UI design have been followed so as any additional information requested by the users is given in one touch/ one click, optimizing the usability and user acceptance of the LYNCEUS system.
Potential Impact:
The results of the LYNCEUS project will be exploited by the SME-AG and SME partners in different forms and significant international market potential is forecasted in the segments targeted by the LYNCEUS SME-AGs and SMEs:
1. Life saving and survival marine equipment
The major market interest is for smart lifejackets with embedded LYNCEUS wireless technology that will support people localisation in the ship and in the sea. CAMPI, ATEVAL and FMV are targeting the cruise and ferry industry initially (which is the largest buyer) and then lower volume industries such as cargo transportation, fishing and yachting industries. The global lifejacket market for the cruise industry is approximately 600,000 new units per year, estimated at €12M, with a forecasted [2] growth per year around 5%. CAMPI is currently supplying lifejackets (able to meet the last SOLAS Chapter III standard in force dated 1.7.2010 as per Res. MSC 200(80)) for 5-6% of the global market and is targeting a bigger penetration by the introduction of a localisable smart jacket. In addition to the above figures which are based on the annual industry needs, the standardisation of the technology will give a significant boost in sales since there are millions of lifejackets now available that should be upgraded with the LYNCEUS localisable patch. In that case CAMPI, ATEVAL and FMV are expected to capitalise their investment and become world market leaders.
2. Fire detection and smoke alarm marine equipment
The installation of a smoke and fire detection system onboard is compulsory for each existing and new passenger ship. It consists of smoke detectors placed in every space/area of the ship (depending on the size of the area) which are all linked together in a central console located at the bridge. The specific market ranges from pleasure yachts, cargo ships and Ro/Ro to large cruise ships which are the most significant buyers. On average, each large cruise ship has between 5000 to 6000 smoke alarm sensors while very large cruise ships like the Oasis of the Seas number around 11000 sensors. When considering an average number of sensors of 6000 and the total yearly demand which is around 100 systems per year then the global industry in smoke detectors for ships totals approximately 35M€. SFM, FMV, SEPVE and ETEK expect to start with a market share of about 10% for the cruise industry, as a starting point, which accounts a total of €3.5M per year. This percentage is expected to be increased with the catch-up of the technology and escalate to very high percentage with the standardisation of the technology. In this case, the retrofitting market will become the main market since there are thousands of cruise ships with hundreds of thousands of sensors to be upgraded.
3. Safe evacuation and emergency management decision support systems
The major market interest is for emergency management software which will be able to process in real time a vast amount of sensorial information and perform efficient emergency management and safe evacuation decision support. OPTIONS, FMV and SEPVE have identified this industry to be a completely new application area since the specific data would be available to decision support systems for the first time. OPTIONS aims to deliver the first software package that could efficiently store, process and visualise the sensorial data and provide real-time decision support feedback, and expects about €20M in 5 years, which corresponds to initial installations, upgrades and maintenance agreements.
4. Maritime search and rescue equipment and services
Coastal Search and Rescue operations are considered as extremely costly. A coast guard C-130 aircraft cost about 4,500€ an hour to operate; coast guard helicopters cost about 5,000€ an hour; coast guard cutters cost about 1,550€ an hour to operate; and coast guard small boats also cost between 300€ to 400€ an hour to run. If we account the personnel needed and also the time that aerial vehicles and boats should operate to complete a mission then the total cost escalates to tens of thousands euros for a single mission. The specific industry which is mainly driven by public funding is considered a huge industry since the cost of acquisition of the search and rescue means is significant. For example the cost of a search and rescue C-130 aeroplane is around US$62 million, a coast guard helicopter (such as the Eurocopter HH-65 Dolphin) around US$8-10 million, a SAR UAV around US$10.5 million and a search and rescue boat around $800,000. GGD is in the position to penetrate the specific market offering its low cost ASARP [3] UAV with approximate price 400-600k of euro. GGD expects to integrate the LYNCEUS interrogator for specific in-sea people localisation missions and achieve a market of about 20M€ in the first five years. ETEK and CAMPI expects to also benefit from the specific industry through the commercialisation of the UAV localisable smart jackets.
[2] Lloyd’s Register Fairplay, Shipbuilding Market Forecast, Issue No.26
[3] http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/
List of Websites:
http://www.lynceus-project.eu
