Tetra and SCYP strengthen collaborations

The Tetra Society of North America, a volunteer-based organization that creates simple assistive devices and adaptations for people with disabilities, is collaborating closely with SCYP and the ATRC in order to increase its capacity and quality of services in the GTA.

As part of this collaboration, Tetra has established a student representative position, which was filled recently by William Li, an outstanding 4th year Engineering Science student. We hope this partnership will provide lots of experiential learning opportunities to UofT students, who will be able to assist Tetra volunteers in the solution of inclusive design challenges in real contexts. At the same time, students with disabilities at UofT may be benefitted by Tetra's on-campus prescence. If you are interested in working with us or have a request to make, please don't hesitate to contact us!

WIPS gearing up for BETA release

Within the next few weeks, the SCYP team will be announcing the first beta release of the WiFi-based Indoor Positioning System (WIPS) developed in-house. We will also make a positioning server available to students, staff and faculty at the University of Toronto, who may be interested in prototyping location-based services for the UofT community.

We cannot yet give out many of the details on how access to this positioning server will be enabled, since things will likely keep changing as we prepare for the release, but there are some basic details that are likely to remain unchanged. For instance:

• Clients accessing the WIPS server will be required to establish a UDP connection in order to submit position estimate requests.
• The WIPS server will respond to XML-formatted requests containing information about the WiFi access points available in a particular location. For example:
  

  <?xml version="1.0"?>
  <!DOCTYPE note [<!ELEMENT beacons (ap+)>
  <!ELEMENT ap (mac+,strength+,channel+,mode+)>
  <!ELEMENT mac (#PCDATA)>
  <!ELEMENT strength (#PCDATA)>
  <!ELEMENT channel (#PCDATA)>
  <!ELEMENT mode (#PCDATA)>
  <beacons>
  <ap>
    <mac>001188F521B0</mac>
    <strength>81.9505719298</strength>
    <channel>1</channel>
    <mode>Master</mode>
  </ap>
  <ap>
    <mac>0201214A0E00</mac>
    <strength>78.0</strength>
    <channel>11</channel>
    <mode>Ad-Hoc</mode>
  </ap>
  <ap>
    <mac>001188A5A790</mac>
    <strength>78.3485142958</strength>
    <channel>6</channel>
    <mode>Master</mode>
  </ap>
  </beacons>
  

  
  
• Once such a request is received, the WIPS server will return XML-formatted data containing the estimated position. This will include:
  • the building name,
  • the floor number,
  • the floorplan URL,
  • the X and Y graphical coordinates (with respect to the floorplan), and
  • the accuracy of the estimate
    

As part of the beta release, we will be collecting data in select buildings across the UofT campus, so if you can't wait to use the WIPS indoor positioning system, please let us know so we include your building in the beta testing.

WIPS Site Launched

We have been super busy in the past couple of months building the infrastructure that will allow mobile application developers to bring location-based services indoors. As part of this effort, we have recently launched the WIPS site. WIPS, which stands for WiFi-based Indoor Positioning System, enables practical indoor localization, an essential requirement for the extension of mapping, navigation, tagging, social networking and tons more into indoor environments.

We will soon come up with an API and other development tools that will allow students, staff and faculty at the University of Toronto to play with this new technology, but in the meanwhile, feel free to drop by the site!