Lassonde PhD student is making smartphones smarter

Your smartphone may be smarter than you thought.

Thanks to findings by Lassonde researchers, GPS data from smartphones may soon be used in place of high-cost specialized engineering measurements.

Recently, Google made public their GPS measurements on android devices. This is a big deal for academics and industry leaders who now have a shot at using large amounts of data.

The problem with the raw data is that its quality is not high enough for engineering research purposes or engineering-related work.

Lassonde research is a key step towards making this data accurate and usable.

By identifying problems such as biases and mitigating them, John Aggrey and his team are improving the accuracy.

Aggrey is a PhD candidate working with Professor Sunil Bisnath researching the design, development and testing of precise point positioning software. Using the software developed at Lassonde, he achieved a 22% improvement in the positional accuracy of GNSS receivers.

His research has been published in the US Institute of Navigation journal. To read the paper, click here.

What does this mean for society?

“Precision farming, deformation monitoring, survey works and Unmanned Automobile Vehicle usage, all from a cellphone!” says John Aggrey