PRE2023 1 Group3
| Name | Student Number | Study | Roles (to be decided) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wilbur van Lierop | 1703870 | Applied Mathematics | w.p.v.lierop@student.tue.nl | |
| Quincy Salden | 1749900 | Applied Mathematics | q.salden@student.tue.nl | |
| Jerome Bleyendaal | 1483870 | Electrical Engineering | j.bleyendaal@student.tue.nl | |
| Jack Grunfeld | 2064677 | Exchange (software and Robotics engineering) | j.w.v.grunfeld@student.tue.nl |
GitLab link: https://gitlab.tue.nl/20233137/projectrobotsg3/-/tree/main (please note git is not currently working for me (Jack) so I have uploaded the import code files for viewing, and the .zip file of the actual program.
Introduction
The TUe, University of Technology Eindhoven, is a large university where over 10.000 students and 2.000 staff members come together to educate, research, and learn about technological sciences. TUe shares its location with Fontys, an university with well over ?5000? students. In total, the schools have around 20 buildings that are home to lecture rooms, meeting rooms, study spots, cafeteria’s, and a variety of other facilities.
For newcomers to Eindhoven it will initially feel overwhelming navigating the campus. Buildings of course follow a certain structure when it comes to labelling their rooms, using signs to sent you in the right direction. However, despite this organization it can still feel like walking around in a maze, especially when a certain route is blocked off, or when your destination is not indicated by signs, such as printers and water fountains. Not being able to find your destination is never appreciated, especially if it means arriving late for classes, meetings or exams.
It is for this reason that we wish to find out which problems newcomers to the campus experience, and provide a way to navigate around campus more efficiently.
Objective | Problem Statement
The aim of this project is to create an interactive mapping solution tailored to the needs of TU/e (Eindhoven University of Technology) students, with a specific focus on first-year students and newcomers to the Eindhoven campus. The project aims to develop a user-friendly platform that provides essential information about campus facilities, including building locations, lecture rooms, study spots, bicycle parking, and more. This platform will also offer real-time updates and recommendations to enhance the overall campus experience.
Target user
1. First-Year Students:
- Orientation: First-year students are often new to both the university and the city. They may not be familiar with the layout of the campus, the locations of key facilities, or the services available to them.
- Needs: They require guidance and support to navigate the campus efficiently. They may also seek information about academic resources, extracurricular activities, and student services.
- Challenges: Finding lecture rooms, study spots, and other essential places can be challenging during the initial days. They may also face difficulties in understanding the campus culture and community.
2. Newcomers to Eindhoven:
- Orientation: new students are often new to both the university and the city. They may not be familiar with the layout of the campus, the locations of key facilities, or the services available to them.
- Integration: They are in the process of adapting to a new environment, which includes adjusting to the campus, city life, and local culture, seeking information around groups, extracurricular activities or student services, very required for student who have not been at TUe from first year which TUe puts on integration and orientation programs.
3. Diverse Backgrounds:
- International Students: TUe attracts a diverse student body, including international students. This diversity adds to the complexity of the target audience, as language and cultural differences may influence their needs and preferences.
- Varied Academic Disciplines: TUe offers a range of academic programs, each with its unique requirements and facilities. Understanding these variations is important when tailoring the solution.
Survey
Survey methodology
We conducted a survey to gather insights from TU/e students, with a focus on first-year students and newcomers to Eindhoven. The survey was distributed to various participants via social media. Participants were informed that their responses would be kept anonymous. The survey was open for a week and
Survey results
A total of 40 participants contributed to the survey, providing valuable feedback on various aspects of campus navigation.
First-Year Status:
When asked if this was their first year at TU/e, 15 respondents (37.5%) indicated that they were first-year students, while 25 respondents (62.5%) reported that they were not.
Campus Navigation Challenges:
A significant number of participants acknowledged facing challenges in finding various campus facilities. Specific issues included locating specific rooms, such as those in Metaforum zaal 11-15 and OGO rooms in Atlas. Participants also mentioned difficulties in navigating between buildings, especially those less commonly visited, such as Fenix. Additionally, finding study spots, rooms, and parking spaces posed challenges for some participants.
Usefulness of App Features:
Participants were asked to rate the usefulness of potential features for the campus navigation app. The highest-rated features included room finder (average score: 4.18 out of 5), study place finder (average score: 4.1 out of 5), and printer finder (average score: 4.08 out of 5). These results highlight the importance of features that aid in locating specific facilities within the campus.
Events Information:
A majority of respondents (average score: 4.35 out of 5) expressed interest in a feature that would display information about social and academic events happening on campus, such as open days for sports associations and lunch lectures.
Location Tracking:
In response to the question of whether they would allow the app to track their location for navigation purposes, 23 participants (62.2%) indicated their willingness, while 14 participants (37.8%) preferred not to. This would allow for the possibility of dynamic features which use location tracking.
Reporting Broken Amenities:
A significant portion of participants (75%) expressed their readiness to actively participate in keeping the interactive map up to date by reporting broken amenities through the app.
Additional Ideas:
Some participants shared additional ideas for the app, including providing information on building opening and closing times, walkways, food and drinks spots with their menus and operating hours, and the possibility of including humorous comments from teachers and students.
Project Requirements, Preferences and constraints
In this chapter, we outline the components that will shape the development of the interactive campus map for the TU/e. The RPC-list (Requirements, Preferences and Constraints) serves as a guide for our project, to ensure we work towards an end project which aligns with not only our own vision and goals, but also those of our users. We recognize that our user's input is very important, if not the most important, and have therefore taken their opinions into account when making this RPC-list.
RPC-List
Requirements
Map accuracy and completeness:
- The interactive map should accurately represent the TU/e campus layout. (prototype will only include a detailed layout of the inside for atlas floor 8)
- It should include information on important facilities, such as buildings, room numbers, study spots, etc.
- It should have a navigation system allowing users to find rooms or buildings.
- The navigation should be able to determine the fastest route from the entrance of atlas to any room on the 8th floor. (prototype might be limited to only a few rooms)
- Navigation system should be able to determine how long a route takes.
- It should be able to find the nearest toilet and determine the fastest route, given a certain starting position
User-friendliness:
- The app should be easily accessible and free to all TU/e students and staff.
- It should have a user friendly interface.
- It should have a search function to be able to find specific buildings, rooms or amenities.
Feedback system:
- The app should have a feature allowing users to report broken amenities.
Preferences
Integration with campus system:
- The mapping system should be integrated within the TU/e app to make it easier for the user.
- This integration should allow users to be able to reserve rooms and study spots through the app.
Multilingual support:
- The app should have support for multiple languages, as there are many users with various backgrounds.
Real-time data:
- The map should provide real-time information on disruptions and availability of buildings, rooms or bridges between buildings.
- It should also provide information on how busy certain area's are or if certain study spots are available.
Campus social hub:
- The app should have a social hub showing events and social activities in the near future.
Constraints
Time constraints:
- The project should be finished within the span of this course.
Data constraints:
- Users might not agree to share their location, rendering any dynamic map features less effective.
Vision
- to develop a dynamic Application, which allows students to have clear and useful hub for information around campus, this includes:
- easy and accessible navigation
- frequent and reliable updates about on-campus amenities.
- information about Cafes/food/drink locations around campus.
- vital knowledge such as bathroom locations, tire pumps, water dispensers.
- access to social hub networks such as events, clubs and gatherings.
- information about study zones and busy timeframes.
-
Key Features
- Real-Time Updates: Implement a dynamic system for real-time updates, including alerts for occupied bicycle parking areas, out-of-order coffee machines, and suggestions for available study spots.
- User Engagement: Encourage user engagement through features like reviews, ratings, and reporting mechanisms, fostering a sense of community among TUe students.
- Mobile Accessibility: Ensure that the interactive map is accessible via mobile devices, allowing students to use it conveniently on the go.
- Path finding: to have the ability to show the best route to locations around TUe. (Using A* search or Dijkstra's algorithm) .
Milestones | Time Frames
10/09/2023 | Tutorial
- Update wiki with basic info about project
12/09/2023 | group meeting
- Understanding Scope of Project, focus on First year students
- TODO:
- Make scope smaller, do research on USER based survey and questions
- Pick a building/ Area to focus on.
- Each member come up with 10 questions before 13th.
18/09/2023 | Tutorial
- Gage how to start without having the user feedback
-get advice from professionals and other lecture figures
- technical issues see first slide.
- email the BIMS lady
- start building a app to find current location and other basic services etc,
-start mapping out the building
weekly roles:
Jack - initial app set-up and dev.
Wilbur - BIMS research
Quincy - BIMS use and dev
Jerome - Survey release
25/09/2023 | Tutorial
- extrapolate survey result, find scope.
- meeting/understanding BIMS.
- continue App dev, for other services on map
- research indoor map methods and techniques.
- figure out what our functional scope is?
weekly roles:
Jack - continue app dev, focus on other features of the app.
- focus of part of app which users identified from survey.
Wilbur - State of the art research
Quincy - RPC-list
Jerome- gage survey data / Look into the BIMs
02/10/2023 | Tutorial
- Define concrete goals; what do we hope our indoor navigation is capable of? -> Find-nearest function.
- Wilbur shall figure out the way to determine expected times of taking stairs and elevators
- Write out answer to question how we envision the user to define the location where he/she is, when using the indoor navigation. -> Use GPS location, small error indoors, which we don't cosider a problem as it will be small compared to the distance between two different facilities.
- Maybe find 2D maps of Atlas, cause we only require coordinates of the facilities in a building.
- explain why BIMs are better for our project than just 2D maps -> BIMs can have inherited information, and information can easiliy be updated once set-up. Also if BIM works at floor 6, it can work for entire building.
- Write down what we achieved with the navigation part (A* algorithm)
- Wilbur try to figure out how the matrixmap is generated from the CSV file, and what is in the CSV file, using the BIM of Atlas.
Research/findings/IDEAS
USEFUL Application:
- https://www.mazemap.com/ Mazemap introduces themselves as follows: "MazeMap is an innovative digital wayfinding platform, offering solutions for large campuses such as universities, hospitals, offices, hotels, and event venues. In addition to wayfinding, we also offer space booking & visualization tools, indoor positioning, IoT integrations and more." One particularly unique feature is their heatmap function, which can provide information about places of a building experiencing high traffic. This feature would be helpful in preventing areas on campus becoming way too crowded, which we consider to be a problem worthy of implementing in our campus map. One example where Mazemap is being used is the NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), where Mazemap became very popular with as two main use-cases the planning of meetings, events, conferences and visits, and navigation around campus by users of the app. It helped students save a lot of time, and optimize their schedules. Mazemap also receives praise for allowing it to implement other services, such as space booking tools, allowing the users to just look in the app where there are unoccupied study spots, and which spots are readily being used.
- https://maps.syracuse.edu/?id=1275#!ct/48860,43018,42873,34415,34413,34416,38441,38498,38500,38611,38612,38613,38617,53074,53075,57269?s/ Syracuse University has their own interactive campus map. One nice feature of this map is 3D-renderings of the exterior of buildings. Furthermore, it has as sidebar with grouped facilities like parking and dining options. It also provides an outdoor-navigation system, though on the webbrowser it does not really function very user-friendly. The wayfinding feature also works between two places in the same building, though the route is not displayed clearly, as it maintains the outdoor-navigation view. Interesting to note is that this map is only accesible as a website, and therefore not as an app. With well over 100 buildings and 20.000 students enrolled, one might suspect to prefer an app over a website, as apps tend to be easier to access on mobile phones.
- Işıkdağ, Ü., Zlatanova, S., & Underwood, J. (2013). A BIM-Oriented model for supporting indoor navigation requirements. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 41, 112–123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2013.05.001 - ''A BIM is a digital representation of all the physical and functional characteristics of a building through its entire life cycle.'' - ''Semantic information is a clear definition (and naming) of building storeys, elements, spaces, as their usage would support better orientation and guidance.'' - ''Primal models include a geometric representation in 3D Euclidean Space and a topology representation for expressing the relationships between building elements. Dual(s) of these models are a network (metric graph) for representing the physical connectivity and a graph (logical graph) for denoting abstract connectivity in a building.'' - ''The representations in the primal layer are mainly utilized for information provision, retrieval and visualization purposes. The geometric networks and graphs in the dual layer are usually derived from the primal representations and used to compute the required (i.e. shortest, fastest) navigation path.'' - ''BIMs contain advanced geometric and semantic representation of the building elements and they are considered as the most valuable source for representing and managing building information through the lifecycle of a building.'' - ''In the development of the new model, IFC was selected a source BIM standard, as it is the mainstream schema standard of Building Information Modeling.''
- Schuldt, C.; Shoushtari, H.; Hellweg, N.; Sternberg, H. L5IN: Overview of an Indoor Navigation Pilot Project. Remote Sens. 2021, 13, 624. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13040624 This article poses the project Level 5 Indoor Navigation, which has the aim to show how 5G signals can be used for indoor positioning in ''navigation systems, which have thus far only been available in the outdoor segment, can now be integrated into existing smartphone systems for indoor navigation.'' Here are some key findings of this paper that are in correspondence with our project:
- When it comes to indoor positioning for navigation, the most-used techniques today are Bluetooth and WLAN, but these methods have the downside that a client server has to be held up in order to work.
- This project also uses a university as demonstration location, where building information modelling was used for positioning.
- The paper explains that in theory it should be possible to create a map data set quickly and easily by just using escape and rescue plans, which exist for a lot of universitial buildings.
- The underlying motivation for using BIMs for the L5IN project: ''The advantage of working with BIMs is that different information about a building can be collected centrally within a data set. Information that otherwise comes from different sources (such as drawings, tables, presentations, and charts) can be bundled within a BIM. The fact that working with BIMs allows the use of a combination of semantic, geometric, and topological attributes is one reason for their growing usage in different cases.''
- In regard with the aim to create a digital map, the following quote seems worth mentioning here: ''Due to the already mentioned role of the model as a single source of information for relevant building information, it makes sense to generate the required maps directly from the model. A distinction must be made whether the modeled 3D geometries of the BIM should be used directly for a navigation application or if they should be abstracted from the 3D geometries and used as a 2D map.''
APP DEV
developing app using SWIFT and Xcode, for seamless easy app development, see gitlab for code Updates.
For the 7th OR 8th floor of atlas we have the data of the walls/pillars that is needed for navigation. With this a 2d matrix is created with 255 (white) indicating a movable space and 0 (black) indicating an obstacle. Currently A* is being used for the navigation part, where the path and path length is returned and. This path is plotted in gray (120). The optimal path is often navigates very close to the walls, which makes the path more difficult to see and it is not natural for people to navigate so close to an obstacle. Erosion was used on the white area with a diamond shaped footprint, which results in that A* does not use those areas for navigation. The pathfinding is also able to navigate to the closest of multiple coordinates, which can be used when for example the coordinates of the toilets are known. The starting location of the pathfinding can also be set by longitude and latitude values.
Things needed for navigation: Certain information from the Bims (toilets, stairs, etc)
BIMS
Certain information is already avaibable from the bims, but there is a lot more available, roooms/toilets/etc.
User portfolio
Common problems first-year students and newcomers experience at the TU/e experience are for example:
- Underestimating walking times from one building to another -> In general it is very stressful being late for your lectures due to not being able to find the right room or underestimating the time required to get from one place to the room. Especially at time of exams, being late can have negative consequences.
- Bicycle parking in front of Atlas is always full, making it difficult to get your bike out of the racks. Many students do not know where to find alternative parking’s.
- Finding the stairs and elevators in particular buildings.
- Parking your car at TU/e, finding a spot at around 11:00 can sometimes take over fifteen minutes.
- Finding a good study spot without reservation can be a pain, especially finding a spot where you can sit with a couple of friends.
- Irregular building opening hours.
- Long lines at cafeteria's like Subway during lunch break and coffee machines in brakes of lectures.
- Events taking place, e.g. career expo in Auditorium -> Subway is closed, not really pleasant to study there.
- Presence of AED machines, first-aid kits, fire extinguishers in case of emergency.
- Gender-neutral restrooms.
- Ping-pong equipment for the ping pong tables.
- Parking for people with a disability.
TIME FRAMES
| Week | Scope | description | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | gauge Idea | group brainstorming, find project scope and idea | - idea found, student helper app for navigation |
| 2 | -scope of Proeject
|
-Understand how and where to start with Project, what is required and how to approach idea
|
- we each found roles within the group which could work on
|
| 3 | - release Survey
|
- releasing the survey to the users, aiming for mostly first years and Exchange students
|
- waiting for survey results, to compute
|
| 4 | - continue app dev
|
- see app dev page
|
- looking into pathing algorithims using python
- waiting longer to receive more responses for survey |
HOURS
| WEEK | Jack - hours | Jack - breakdown | Wilbur - hours | Wilbur - breakdown | Jerome - hours | Jerome - breakdown | Quincy - hours | Quincy - breakdown | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0hr | N/A | |||||||||
| 2 | 10hrs | had the first meeting where we discussed approaches and where to start development processes. Started research into to the Idea and steps needed for app dev, see APP dev section now | |||||||||
| 3 | 12hrs | started app dev, please description above |