Systems for improving mobile convenience and safety of walkers, the aged and handicapped persons have been investigated in ITS of Japan. Investigations have been made on the navigation system and route instruction system for walkers, or the instruction and guidance system for visually handicapped persons aiming at providing the route guidance to walkers for improving the mobile convenience, and the man location system for making sure of the safety of walkers aiming at the prevention of accidents. These systems are based mainly on the functions for detecting man position at high accuracy and displaying the positional information onto the digital map. This man location system has introduced the differential global positioning system (DGPS) for performing the positioned detection at high accuracy and the GPS intermittent receiving system for maintaining portability. This paper briefly describes the man location system first and then reports on the development and evaluation of test results of the DGPS system for performing the positional detection at high accuracy and the GPS intermittent receiving system for maintaining portability.
Abstract