The Mathematics used in Navigation Systems

Hengshan Li
School of Computing and Information Science
University of Maine
5711 Boardman Hall, Orono, ME
hengshan.li@umit.maine.edu

January 28, 2012

Introduction to the Navigation Systems

Navigation system is an electronic system that aids navigation. It provides necessary

spatial information to effect human navigation action. Navigation system can be used in
both outdoor and indoor spaces. All navigation system can answer the question Where
am I? based on the real time positioning and map. Navigation system may be able to
answer: 1. which roads/corridors should I take in order to get to my desired destination?
2. Where is the nearest amenity, such as gas station, restaurant or bathroom?
In this paper, I focus on two aspects of math used in the navigation system. The
first is the shortest path searching which uses the graph theory. Although A* is more
commonly used in many navigation systems, this paper introduced a more basic algorithm,
Dijkstras algorithm, which is the basis for all optimizations of shortest path algorithm.
The second aspect of math I will illustrate is the regular language and finite automata,
which could be the theoretical foundation of speech interface used in navigation system.
Basically, I will focus on the outdoor navigation system, as it is widely used navigation
system in our daily lives. At the end of each section, however, I would like to add a little
bit of thinking about the indoor navigation system, as it is my research interest.

Dijkstras algorithm

One basic function of navigation system is to find the shortest path to the destination.
A* search algorithm solves for single-pair shortest path using heuristics. Most navigation
systems use A * algorithm to answer how to navigate from current location to destination.
Dijkstras algorithm solves the single-source shortest path problem, which means to find
shortest paths from a source vertex v to all other vertices in the graph. In this paper,
however, I focused on the Dijkstras algorithm, as from the literature search, it is the
basis for all optimizations of shortest path algorithm.
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An example of finding the shortest bath was presented to illustrate how the algorithm
works. As is shown in the figure 1, we assume that each building is located on a separated
island. The power of each edge between two buildings is the distance between islands.
Which is the shortest to get to Boardman hall from Forgler library?
Figure 1: The Dijkstras Algorithm Example.

First, mark all nodes unvisited. Set the initial node as Forgler. Create a set of the
unvisited nodes called the unvisited set consisting of all the nodes except the initial node.
The unvisited set consists Alumni, Lord, Stevens, Aubert, Little, Hart and Boardman.
The table is as below.

Alumni

Table 1: The First Step

Lord Stevens Aubert Little

Hart

Boardman

Forgler
Second, for the current node, consider all of its unvisited neighbors and calculate their
tentative distances. If this distance is less than the previously recorded distance, then
overwrite that distance. This is the first iteration, so there is no previously recorded
distance. We just put the distance in the table. If there is no edge between two nodes,
we simply put infinity symbol.

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Forgler

Alumni

Table 2: The Second Step

Lord Stevens Aubert Little

20

Hart

Boardman

Third, considering all of the neighbors of the current node, mark the current node as
visited and remove it from the unvisited set. A visited node will never be checked again;
its distance recorded now is final and minimal. In this case, the nearest distance between
Stevens and Forgler is 20. We remove Stevens from the unvisited set. The table now is
as below:
Table 3: The Third Step
Alumni Lord Aubert Little Hart
Forgler

Stevens

20+20

20+80

Boardman

We repeat the step 3 until the unvisited set is empty, and then stop. The algorithm has
finished. We can get that the shortest path from Forgler to Boardman is from Stevens to
Lord, Aubert, Hart and Boardman. The distance is 80. For the convenience, I combined
all the tables in one table as below:

Al
L
Forgler

Stevens 20+20
Lord

Aubert
Hart

Little

Table 4: The Whole Table

Au
Li
H

20+80

20+20+10 20+80

120+40 50+10
60+10

20+20+10+10+20
20+20+10+10+20

As for the indoor navigation system, the shortest path is different in terms of that
the weights between edges are sometimes incomparable. For example, my office is located
at the 238 Boardman as is shown in figure 2, and there are two nearby bathrooms. One
is located at the third floor opposite the mail room. Another is at the same floor with
my office, but it is around 100 feets away. It is a little bit tricky to assign the weights
between my office and the two bathrooms, as it seems to be incomparable between height
and distance. In this case, the shortest path for indoor space might depend on the context.
For example, if the time is limited, the third floor bathroom would be a better choice.
Another example is that, in emergency, navigation system needs to find the way to
escape from the building as is shown in figure 3. In this case, navigation system might
needs to find a pseudo destination. Which destination chose make a difference for the
success of escaping.
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Figure 2: The Bathrooms Example.

Figure 3: The Pseudo Destination Example.

Another commonly used function of navigation system is to find all the amenities
nearby. As is shown in the figure 4, we want to find the gas stations within 2 miles. At
first, I thought is a topological operation problem. Actually, it is still a graph problem,
and the topology operation can be used to constrain the searching.
Figure 4: The Nearby Gas Station Example.

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First, we use the topology operation and find two gas stations. Obviously, the gas
station 2 is more than 2 miles far. Next, we use the graph to calculate the shortest
distance between the current location and all the gas stations.

Regular Language and Automata Machine

If you drive to the Bangor Mall, the navigation system will use the speech interface,such
as in 500 feet, turn right on Main Street, to guide you. Speech interface is intuitive
and helpful. The second aspect of math I will illustrate is the regular language and finite
automata used in the speech interface of navigation system.
There are two kinds of languages. The first one is termed as finite alphabet languageague, such as in, feet, turn, right, on and street and so on. For these
words, we can record the voice in advance. In this case, the alphabet A equals {in, feet,
turn, right, on, street}. Another kind of language is termed as infinite alphabet lanague,
such as the address name or the street name. Theoretically, it is finite. However, it will
be extremely time-consuming and needs a large storge space to record all the vedio of
street names. For these words, we have to use the text to speech technology to synthesize
the speech. In this case, the alphabet consists of all the vowels and consonants. In this
paper, I only focus on the first kind of language, which is the regular language. There are
four categories of the alphabet.
The first category contains the number {0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,.} and the unit {feet, mile,
kilometer, meter}. This category can construct any distance words, such as 1.3 mile, 0.4
kilometer and 500 feet and so on. The second category contains the direction right, left
and the action turn. This category is responsible for constructing the direction instruction,
such as turn left and turn right. The third category contains the informing words and some
prepositions, such as recalculating, in and on and so on. Based on the three categories,
the grammar of the navigation system speech is:
S recalculating | in A.A B turn C on D street
A T|AT
T 0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|.
B feet| mile| kilometer| meter
C left| right
D is the synthesized speech of the street name. The automata graph is as below:
For the indoor space, there are at least two differences. First, there are stairs, escalators
and elevators in the indoor space, so the language might contain enter the elevator and go
upstairs to the 5 floor. Another different is that there is no corridor name, so we cannot
say turn right on Broadway corridor. The substitute approach is to add landmarks, so
the language might be in 20 feet, go upstairs and get to floor 5 and turn left,the room
238 is at your right. The automata of indoor space is shown is the figure 4.
The indoor automata machine is just a rough model. It is a very interesting topic
and I may keep on searching related literature, as it is closely related to my research.
In summary, I discussed two Mathematic used in the navigation system and compared a
little bit difference between the application for indoor and outdoor spaces.
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Figure 5: The Outdoor Speech Interface Automata Machine.

Figure 6: The Indoor Speech Interface Automata Machine.

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