R . F . I . D . Rescuing Firefighters in Distress

1. R . F . I . D . Rescuing Firefighters in Distress Team Ganz: Jonathan Bruso Michael Carney Daniel Fortin James Schafer

2. Background and Motivation: • Firefighters have an enormous task and endanger their life when going into burning buildings • Most of the time they have never been in the building • Visibility skewed by smoke • There is nothing keeping track of where a firefighter is • Trapped and needs help • Lost in building • A device that can track firefighters in a building could aid in directing as well as finding firefighters in a building

3. Background and Motivation: • Many firefighter have perished after becoming lost or unconscious in a burning building. • Worcester, MA 1999 • Six firefighters were killed after becoming lost in a six story building while trying to save homeless inhabitants. • Bronx, NY 2006 • One firefighter killed and three seriously injured when roof of building collapsed on them. • Took a significant amount of time to locate their distress signals. • Charleston, SC 2007 • Nine firefighters killed in a Sofa Store blaze. • They became trapped when part of the building collapsed and they could not be located.

4. Concept: • Lives would be saved if there is a way to track a firefighters location inside a building Person in build with question mark over head

5. Current Technologies: • On Site Emergency Resource Tracking (OnSite ERT) • Firefighters drop boxes in and around building • Firefighter are equipped with a monitoring system. • PC accessible interface for commander.

6. OnSite ERT Pros & Cons • Pros • Gives an GUI display of the incident and personal on hand • Can track firefighters location and vitals • Gives a well documented time-stamped information on what occurred at the incident • Cons • Uses GPS and safelight databases (subscription fees) • Suitcase unit is expensive • Does not give a view of the incident inside the building

7. System Requirements: • Has to be able to track firefighters in the building • Show firefighters path over time • Alert Incident Commander (IC) if firefighter has not moved for fixed period of time • Warn IC if firefighter is moving out of the Tag range. • Store these locations in a database • Dynamically display firefighters position on a visual blueprint of the building • Critical System, must be able to detect and recover from error quickly • User Friendly

8. Idea #1: Digital Representation with Scanners • Cons • Scanners have a high cost • ~$700 • Big Building = $$$ • Must be used sparsely • Loss of Scanner means loss of precision

9. Idea #2: Digital Representation with Tags • Pros • Tags have low cost • ~$18 • Decreased scalability cost • Increased precision • Loss of a Tag does not entail critical error • Mobile scanner is less prone to destruction

10. System Block Diagram:

11. The basic User Interface (UI) Design

12. The basic User Interface (UI) Design: • Locations Displayed on pre-loaded blueprint • Traveled paths can be viewed • Incident Commander (IC) can relay positional information via radio

13. UI With Path Selected

14. How is location determined? • Trilateration is used to determine the position based on simultaneous length measurements from three known sites (Nodes A, B and C) • The point where the three circles intersect is the desired coordinate • More circles could be used to reduce error

15. Signal Strength to Distance conversion • Radio waves diminish logarithmically with distance • Tag distance (d) may be calculated as a function of: • Signal strength (sT) • Carrier frequency (fc) • Signal strength exponent (n) • sT = 20*log(fc)+ 10*n*log(d) – 28 • Equation from Retscher, Fu, www.http://www.mycoordinates.org/may08/trilateration.php • ITU Indoor Location Model Distance

16. Location of tag from Trilateration • Algorithm • Signal strength gives distances • Distances give equations for three spheres • Spheres can be equated to find location of reader • Sources of error • Walls • Multiple floors • Wave interference

17. Math behind Trilateration • Trilateration can be expressed as the problem of finding the intersection of three spheres. Equation from Thomas, Ros, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=01391018 • Note that the solution depends on the chosen reference frame. • Usually one of the nodes is placed at the origin to simplify the calculations

18. Dealing with error • Error solutions • Calibrate signal strength variation before entry into building • Calibrate variation for different building materials • Use ITU Indoor Calibration Model

19. Additional Tag Applications • Distress Tags • Located in hot spots across building where those in distress can obtain in order to be rescued • Pros: • Can give a general location of person in distress • Finding a person in distress would be much faster and more direct • Cons: • The tags could be false alarms • Person holding tag could be moving • Currently being researched

20. Additional Tag Possibilities cont.. • Point of Interest tags (PoI) • Carried by firefighters and can be thrown down to point out a particular point of interest or a certain path • Pros • Important points in a building can be highlighted • A trail could be left to help guide firefighters to safety • Cons • Tags will need to be carried in a signal blocking pouch or they will interfere with the scanners • Currently undergoing research

21. Database Functionality • Stores incoming point data of each fireman within the building • Stores pre-existing data of stationary RFID tags • Stores blueprints/building information • Must be fast and reliable • Due to budget constraint a laptop will be used in place of a real server

22. General Attribute Tables: • These tables contain the pre-instantiated general attributes of the Active tags and Scanners General Attribute Table Makeup Fireman Attribute Table

23. Collected Positioning Table • A general layout of the positioning table below • This table lists all tags positions given with respect to time • Updated frequently with new coordinates • Various Queries can be used to get certain tags, paths, floors, ect…

24. Challenges • Trilateration Algorithm • Formula seems straight forward • Indoor scenario causes problems interference and RF propagation • Errors accumulate fast. • Correlating the signal strength to distance • Position Calibration

25. Challenges cont… • Incident Commander GUI • Must display in Real Time • On the fly path animation and image generation is difficult. • Using Pre-Inputted Blueprint • Displaying firefighters “relative” tag position to absolute blueprint position. • Must use GPS to provide this association • Coordinating blueprint with error checking • Making sure firefighter does not “walk through walls”

26. Proposed MDR Deliverables • Incident Commander GUI • Use mock data inside database to simulate GUI • Able to see location of Firefighter on blueprint • Ability to show the total path traveled (with timestamps) • RFID Reader and Tags • Purchase • Research SDK and Trilateration Algorithms • Begin experimentation with point location and error correction

27. Division of Labor • Jon Bruso • Interactive Incident Commander GUI, blueprint generation software, on the fly image generation • Mike Carney • Trilateration Algorithm, On the fly path(animation) generation • Dan Fortin • Purchase RFID equipment, GPS location integration, and Trilateration Algorithm • James Schafer • Database creation and management, coordinating relative RFID positions with blueprint

28. Final Deliverables • Design documents and specifications • Blueprint generation software • Incident Commander GUI • Path and Point Display • With timestamps • Firefighter’s signal strength warning • Ability to track multiple Firefighters • Demonstrate tracking a RFID reader throughout a location on campus.